استفاده از فرایند تحلیلی شبکه (ANP) در تجزیه و تحلیل SWOT - مطالعه موردی یک شرکت نساجی

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis does not provide an analytical means to determine the importance of the identified factors or the ability to assess decision alternatives according to these factors. Although the analysis successfully pinpoints the factors, individual factors are usually described briefly and very generally. For this reason, SWOT analysis possesses deficiencies in the measurement and evaluation steps. Although the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique removes these deficiencies, it does not allow for measurement of the possible dependencies among the factors. The AHP method assumes that the factors presented in the hierarchical structure are independent; however, this assumption may be inappropriate in light of certain internal and external environmental effects. Therefore, it is necessary to employ a form of SWOT analysis that measures and takes into account the possible dependency among the factors. This paper demonstrates a process for quantitative SWOT analysis that can be performed even when there is dependence among strategic factors. The proposed algorithm uses the analytic network process (ANP), which allows measurement of the dependency among the strategic factors, as well as AHP, which is based on the independence between the factors. Dependency among the SWOT factors is observed to effect the strategic and sub-factor weights, as well as to change the strategy priorities.

Strategic management can be understood as the collection of decisions and actions taken by business management, in consultation with all levels within the organization, to determine the long-term activities of the organization [8]. Many approaches and techniques can be used to analyze strategic cases in the strategic management process [2]. Among them, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis, which evaluates the opportunities, threats, strengths and weaknesses of an organization, is the most common [7]. SWOT analysis is an important support tool for decision-making, and is commonly used as a means to systematically analyze an organization’s internal and external environments [11], [13], [15], [36] and [40]. By identifying its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, the organization can build strategies upon its strengths, eliminate its weaknesses, and exploit its opportunities or use them to counter the threats. The strengths and weaknesses are identified by an internal environment appraisal while the opportunities and threats are identified by an external environment appraisal [3]. SWOT analysis summarizes the most important internal and external factors that may affect the organization’s future, which are referred to as strategic factors [11]. The external and internal environments consist of variables which are outside and inside the organization, respectively. The organization’s management has no short-term effect on either type of variable [8]. Comprehensive environmental analysis is important in recognition of the variety of internal and external forces with which an organization is confronted. On the one hand these forces may comprise potential stimulants, and on the other hand, they may consist of potential limitations regarding the performance of the organization or the objectives that the organization wishes to achieve [8]. The obtained information can be systematically represented in a matrix [38]; different combinations of the four factors from the matrix [2] and [8] can aid in determination of strategies for long-term progress. When used properly, SWOT can provide a good basis for strategy formulation [10]. However, SWOT analysis is not without weaknesses in the measurement and evaluation steps [7] and [20]. In conventional SWOT analysis, the magnitude of the factors is not quantified to determine the effect of each factor on the proposed plan or strategy [19]. In other words, SWOT analysis does not provide an analytical means to determine the relative importance of the factors, or the ability to assess the appropriateness of decision alternatives based on these factors [10]. While it does pinpoint the factors in the analysis, individual factors are usually described briefly and very generally [7]. More specifically, SWOT allows analysts to categorize factors as being internal (Strengths, Weaknesses) or external (Opportunities, Threats) in relation to a given decision, and thus enables them to compare opportunities and threats with strengths and weaknesses [35]. However, the result of SWOT analysis is often merely a listing or an incomplete qualitative examination of the internal and external factors [11]. For this reason, SWOT analysis cannot comprehensively appraise the strategic decision-making process [7].

In SWOT analysis, strategic alternatives are selected in the light of the strengths, weaknesses, threats and, opportunities of the organization as determined through internal and external environment analysis. However, SWOT analysis is not capable of quantitatively determining the weights and effects of the strategic factors on the alternatives. Although some studies do perform such quantitative weighting, these studies fail to consider the relations or dependencies of the factors of the SWOT analysis. It is generally not possible to assume the SWOT factors to be independent and unrelated with one another. In this study, we sought to demonstrate, with a case study example, that it is possible to perform a quantitative SWOT analysis wherein the possible dependencies among SWOT factors are included. The ANP technique, which enables measuring inter-factor dependencies, is utilized in this work. The AHP method is also used with SWOT analysis to compare the effects of the dependency among the SWOT factors on prioritizing the alternative strategies and on the SWOT sub-factors weights. The factors from the SWOT analysis and the alternative strategies based on these factors were transformed into an ANP model. The first four levels of the ANP model consist of the aim (choosing the best strategy), the SWOT factors, SWOT sub-factors and, four alternative strategies, respectively. The weights of the factors of the SWOT analysis differ according to the method used in the analysis (AHP or ANP), due to the dependency among the SWOT factors. In other words, the dependency or independency of SWOT factors affects the factor weights of the SWOT analysis. In this study, it was observed that the dependency among SWOT factors affects both the strategy selection and the strategy priority order. The strategy orders obtained by the ANP method and the AHP method were found to be different. Future research may seek to also consider the effect of possible dependencies among the SWOT sub-factors themselves. In addition, fuzzy numbers can be introduced in the AHP or ANP methods to more effectively analyze cases having greater uncertainty in the pairwise comparison matrices.