Choosing a middle manager with management competency and capabilities will have a decisive influence on the organization's development for international shipping service providers. There is ambiguity and uncertainty in the decision-making environment during the selection of a middle manager and many evaluation criteria must be considered. The main purpose of this article is to construct a fuzzy multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) model for international shipping service providers to use when selecting a middle manager. First, some methods and concepts of the fuzzy theory are introduced in this article. Five steps of evaluation model of fuzzy MCDM algorithms are then proposed to choose a best middle manager. Finally, an international shipping case is presented and the proposed fuzzy MCDM model is illustrated step by step. It can be seen from the demonstration that this evaluation model can be used to effectively select the best middle manager.

The main purpose of this article is to use the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method to empirically study the key competency and capabilities affecting the selection of middle managers for global shipping logistics service providers (GSLSPs). To facilitate this theme for obtaining key competency and capabilities, a list of five management competency with twenty-five capabilities are preliminary summarized. Subsequently, the proposed fuzzy AHP method is applied to measure relative weights for evaluating these competency and capabilities. The appraisal approach is then to perform empirical survey via AHP expert questionnaires. Finally, the empirical results show that: (1) ‘professional competency’ is the most important management competency affecting the selection of middle managers for GSLSPs. (2) In order of relative importance, the top six key management capabilities affecting the selection of middle managers for GSLSPs are the ‘capability to manage work pressure,’ ‘capability to manage crisis,’ ‘capability to lead team awareness,’ ‘capability to manage interpersonal networks perfectly,’ ‘capability to use logistics expertise to enhance work efficiency,’ and ‘capability to effectively build team spirit and work atmosphere,’ respectively. Furthermore, concluding remarks are provided in this article.