The setting and attainment of goals is a fundamental aspect of human decision making, which is manifest in the modern discipline of operational research by the technique of goal programming. Influences from the fields of mathematical programming and multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) can be found in goal programming, and it is our view that in order to use goal programming most effectively, users should be aware of the basic aspects and concepts of both fields.

We are aware that this will not be the first book on goal programming and have ourselves learnt about the topic from the previous works of Charnes and Cooper (1961), Lee (1970), Ignizio (1976, 1982, 1985, 1994), and Romero (1991).We have noted, however, that most of these excellent books are now out of print, and practitioners and post-graduate students in the field are reporting increasing difficulty in obtaining a work that will allow them to grasp the fundamentals of goal programming and hence utilise the full power and flexibility of the technique. It is also our desire to see goal programming continue to develop and be applied in a practical and correct manner. We would also like users of the technique to have access to and the ability to choose from the full range of variants and extensions of goal programming and its analysis tools in order to build models that best reflect the preferences and desires of their decision maker(s).

The purpose of this book is therefore to empower academics and practitioners to be able to build effective goal programming models, as well as to detail the current state of the art in the topic and lay the foundation for its future development and continued application to new and varied fields of application as they arise.

The notation and terminology used in this book for investigating GP and its variants have been designed and refined in collaboration with the leading experts in the field. We believe they give the best description of the subject and would want them to become the standards.

This book is divided into nine chapters. Chapter 1 gives a brief history of goal programming and details the fundamental definitions arising from the fields of mathematical programming and multiple criteria decision making that are used throughout the text. A section on the underlying philosophies of goal programming is also included. Chapter 2 details the goal programming variants and defines them algebraically.