Stimulated by the expressed managers’ need for some completed methods for environmental management in enterprises, we present the method for environmentally oriented business decision-making. It is based on simulations where optimization models of business processes are used as scenarios. The possibilities for an integrated approach to environmental protection are introduced and – decomposed according to the type of the considered element by using zero-one variables – included in the optimization models. | Yugoslav Journal of Operations Research 14 (2004), Number 1, 65-82 THE MULTICRITERIA METHOD FOR ENVIRONMENTALLY ORIENTED BUSINESS DECISION-MAKING Vesna ČANČER Faculty of Economics and Business Maribor University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia Received: November 2002 / Accepted: December 2003 Abstract: Stimulated by the expressed managers’ need for some completed methods for environmental management in enterprises, we present the method for environmentally oriented business decision-making. It is based on simulations where optimization models of business processes are used as scenarios. The possibilities for an integrated approach to environmental protection are introduced and – decomposed according to the type of the considered element by using zero-one variables – included in the optimization models. The method is completed for multicriteria decision-making where in the simulations obtained optimal values are included. In a real-life case where the Analytic Hierarchy Process technique is used to evaluate environmentally oriented business processes, special attention is given to criteria and weights: we consider preferences and survey findings on the environmental impact of business processes in the enterprise, survey findings on environmental management in the processing industry, and ecobalances. Keywords: Analytic Hierarchy Process, environmental management, linear mixed integer optimization model, multicriteria decision-making method, simulation. 1. INTRODUCTION The results of our research on environmentally oriented business decisionmaking performed in 79 enterprises in the Slovene processing industry during November and December 2001; show that 43 % of the enterprises in the sample use the tools and methodology for environmental management in business decision-making. A great stimulus for our research work on environmentally oriented business decision-making is V. Čančer / The Multicriteria Method 66 the firm belief of 74 % of the
