Abstract: | This paper is devoted to the study of techniques allowing one to rank order the elements of a finite set on the basis of a non-necessarily complete or transitive binary relation. In the area of MCDM, such a problem occurs with outranking methods. We review a number of theoretical results concerning this problem and show how they may be useful in order to guide the choice of a particular technique. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |