Interactive Multiple Goal Programming Applications to Financial Planning International Series in Management Science Operations Research Motivation The book "Interactive Multiple Goal Programming Applications to Financial Planning" is based on the idea that both public and private decision-making in practice can often be improved by using formal non-native decision models and methods. To some extent, the validity of this statement can be measured by the impressive number of successes of disciplines such as operations research and management science. However, as witnessed by the many discussions in professional journals in these fields, many models and methods do not completely meet the requirements of decision-making in practice. Of all possible origins of these clear shortcomings, we mainly focus on the fact that most of these models and methods are unsuitable for decision situations where multiple and potentially conflicting objectives play a role. The need to account for multiple goals was observed relatively early, as Hoffman [195] noted while describing "what seem to be the principal areas in linear programming where new ideas and new methods are needed. " In this problem, the assignment of relative weights is a significant issue for the planning staff and is "probably not the province of the mathematician engaged in solving this problem. " These remarks were true precursors of later developments. Nevertheless, the need for methods dealing with multiple goals was not widely recognized until much later when the field had developed further and was more mature.

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