Strategy development and evaluation approach and its application

In the decision environment the questions, including the details of organizationalsuccess, ?what we are?? and ?where we are going?? are frequently asked in theorganization management. Furthermore, for organizations to obtain the success, theanswer of the question ?for which strategies we have to use our limited resourcesfirst?? is gaining more importance from day to day.SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis is a commonlyused tool for analyzing internal and external environments in order to attain asystematic approach and support for a decision situation. AHP (Analytic HierarchyProcess) is a commonly used multi criteria decision making method that can deal withboth qualitative and quantitative criteria. Combining Multiple Criteria DecisionSupport (MCDS) methods with SWOT analysis (A?WOT approach) yields analyticalpriorities for the factors included in SWOT analysis and makes them commensurable.In the combined utilization, while SWOT analysis supports the decision situation,AHP measures the relative importance of the SWOT factors.In this study, SWOT factors were prioritized with respect to their importance usingFuzzy AHP instead of classical AHP in the original A?WOT method. Organizationalstrategies were defined in a way of covering the SWOT factors having the biggestweights and were prioritized and evaluated by defining these strategies as the sum ofthe calculated weights of the related SWOT factors. In addition, modular, flexible andreusable software was developed to support the proposed approach in the real worldapplications.As a consequent of applications, it is observed that the proposed combined approachand the developed software bring up a useful and flexible decision support system thatcan be used in the strategy development and evaluation process with a decisionsituation analysis support.Keywords: SWOT, Fuzzy AHP, A?WOT, Fuzzy Logic, Strategy Development,Strategy Evaluation.