*3.2. Development of Construction Program Manager Selection Evaluation Index System Based on Grounded Theory*

In this paper, the interview data of 13 construction program manager are used for theoretical modeling, and the rest are used to validate the model. Firstly, the collected raw data are imported into qualitative analysis software, Nvivo11, for spindle and selective coding to identify the characteristic indices and structural dimensions of the managers. Based on the software analysis results and the conducted literature review presented in the previous section, the construction program manager competency model use in this study is shown in Table 1.


**Table 1.** Competency model of construction program manager.


**Table 1.** *Cont.*

Based on grounded theory, this paper constructs the selection and evaluation indices of construction program managers, namely C = {C1 = Personality charm, C2 = Management ability, C3 = Communication and coordination, C4 = Professional skills, C5 = Risk control, C6 = Strategic vision}.

#### **4. Construction Program Manager Selection Model**

#### *4.1. Method Selection*

Due to the complexity of construction programs, the competent construction program manager should have multi-factor competencies. In reality, due to the limitation of personal knowledge and experiences, it is often difficult to achieve optimal decisions only judging personal abilities. Therefore, the selection of construction program managers should be a multi-attribute group decision-making process.

In this process, due to the "bounded rationality" characteristics of the decision makers, the psychological factors and preferences will affect the results. When decision makers have the choice to compare the selected results with other alternatives, it may result in regret, which most decision makers prefer to avoid. Considering the cognitive limitations and subjective psychological preferences of the decision makers, "complete rational" decisionmaking based on expectation theory is often unable to explain the actual decision-making behavior. To solve such problems, Kahneman and Tversk [34], Bell [35], and Loomes and Sugden [36] proposed prospect theory and regret theory, respectively. Prospect theory considers a series of factors such as reference point dependence, loss dependence and

subjective probability of the decision makers, while regret theory focuses on the influence of "regret" of decision makers on decision effectiveness. Compared with prospect theory, regret theory has fewer assumptions which can better describe and explain the paradoxes such as Alai paradox and preference reversal effect in actual decision-making behavior, so it is more widely used in decision-making problems. Therefore, this paper chooses regret theory to take the psychological characteristics of decision makers into consideration and obtains the multi-attribute evaluation matrix to calculate the perceived utility value of each alternative construction program manager.

In the multi-attribute group decision-making of construction project group manager selection, determining the weight of the evaluation attributes is the basis for the ranking and selection process. The current methods for attribute weight determination include MCDM (Multi-criteria decision-making) proposed by Linett Montano Guzman [37], and DEMATEL proposed by Gabus and Fontela [38,39] of Geneva Research Center. MCDM refers to an analytical method for making decisions under multiple decision criteria or objectives, and commonly used methods include hierarchical analysis (AHP), fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE), grey correlation analysis (GRA), and entropy weighting. These methods mostly try to obtain the best decision result by assigning weights to decision factors and evaluating them comprehensively. DEMATEL was originally used to solve complex social events, based on graph theory and matrix to construct structural models through analysis to study the causal relationships between attributes of complex events and identify key attributes for better analysis of events. Therefore, MCDM and DEMATEL are slightly different in their scope of application. MCDM is more suitable for scenarios that require selection from multiple decision criteria or objectives, while DEMATEL is more suitable for scenarios that require understanding the interactions between factors in complex systems [40–42]. With the advancement of related techniques, multi-criteria decision analysis method like Ordinal Priority Approach (OPA) have also emerged. The core idea of OPA is to compare the relative importance of different attributes to determine the best decision. The method usually involves assigning different attributes to different importance levels, such as high, medium and low, and scoring and weighting each attribute to calculate a composite score [43]. Compared to DEMATEL, OPA places more emphasis on the comparison and ranking between attributes, instead of the interdependence between the attributes. For the above considerations, DEMATEL is chosen in this paper.

The key to the application of group decision making is the aggregation of decision makers' judgment information. Due to the differences in professional background, knowledge and ability, the evaluation quality and level of each decision maker, the application in this study should be a heterogeneous decision group. The closer the attribute evaluation result of a decision-maker is to the group attribute evaluation result, the more credible the decision-maker is, and the greater its weight. Therefore, this paper uses deviation minimization and attribute weights to obtain the weights of the decision makers. By comparing the attribute weights determined by each decision maker based on Fuzzy-DEMATEL, smaller weights were given to decision makers with larger difference values. Therefore, this paper selects the regret theory to consider the psychological characteristics of decision makers to obtain the perceived utility matrix. The algorithm flow of linguistic multi-attribute selection of construction program managers based on regret theory and Fuzzy-DEMATEL is shown in Figure 2.

**Figure 2.** Linguistic Multi-attribute selection of construction program managers based on Regret Theory and Fuzzy-DEMATEL.

#### *4.2. Construction Program Manager Selection*
