Ranking OECD countries with multi criteria decision making approach by using research and development indicators

Research and Development (R & D) is one of the most critical areas in which both institutions and countries are concerned. Through its indicators, countries can measure the extent of their progress and development, in addation to know which areas need more attention at present and in the future. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries consider as the most developed, economicl development and interest in research and development as a basic field to demonstrate the progress and raise it among other countries. Therefore, the research aims to find the ranking of these countries according research and development (R & D) indicators and determine Turkey's position among them. Besides to check the potential correlation between the OECD countries ranking by R & D indicators and both of Human Development index (HDI) and ICT Development Index (IDI) as an important world wide indexes related to R & D field. The multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) is suggested to be a viable method to achieve this goal, due to its ability to deal with several number of criteria (indicators) and large data. In this thesis three different MCDM techniques (tools) which are Multi Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT), Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) were introduced and applied. Through this thesis, a series of procedures were conducted and the results determined under some limitations and scenarios. Four scenarios (assumptions) were presented to make the final ranking for 38 of OECD countries, which are: MAUT with equal weights, MAUT with AHP weights, TOPSIS with equal weights and finally TOPSIS with AHP weights. Among these scenarios, the results shown that Korea and Japan were in the top three places in all scenarios, Turky's position came late in the ranking at all scenarios, there is a sufficient positive correlation between the OECD countries ranking by R & D indicators and both of HDI and IDI and it shown also MAUT method is the strongest technique that describe the correlation better than other methods. The research presented several recommendations through the extracted results for concerning countries and suggestions for future researchers. The recommandations includes continue at the same pace of develping and caring about R&D fileds for the xvi high ranked countries, allocate more of GDP for spending on R&D filed especially in Turkey, and enhance the field of R & D by do workshops and conferances related to this subject. And for future researches, there is a possibility to use another MCDM methods to make a ranking, also may use another fields indicators to make the ranking depending on it with different data values.