A general aggregation formalism for multi criteria decision making (MCDM) applications is presented. Using this formalism, we derive the existing aggregation operators, and also develop some new ones. The proposed general formalism is further extended to develop discriminative class of aggregation operators for aiding MCDM. The proposed discriminative aggregation operators are based on the consideration of the variability in the various evaluations of a criterion. Four families of discriminative aggregation operators are developed using the extended formalism. These operators and applied in a managerial real world case-study. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.