Budget allocation in a portfolio of projects concerning both efficiency and fairness

Allocation of scarce resources to different projects within a portfolio has been the subject of many scientific researches for a long time. Most of those are focused on maximizing the gained profit while rest of them concentrate on the other critical factors such as time, risk, cost, and alignment with the organizational strategic goals. But, few studies has considered this issue that in an unbalanced budget or resource allocation, those subjects, departments or projects that are received less share, may get failed andput the credit of the organization at risk. Also, the managers and staff who are involved in those projects or departments may lose their enthusiasm and job satisfaction and their capabilities may remain unused. In this paper, an OR Model is proposed to give a balanced budget allocation based on both Fairness and efficiency . The model not only helps the managers choose between projects, but also propose one of these three modes for accepted projects: Extended Mode , Normal Mode and limited Mode . The outcomes of the models can be used as a decision support system for portfolio managers.

Keywords:

Fair allocation , Fairness , Budget allocation , Project Portfolio selection