Proceso De Análisis Jerarquico

Summary: SWOT is a widely applied tool in strategic decision support. In SWOT, the internal and external factors most important for the enterprise’s future are grouped into four categories: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. By applying SWOT in a strategic planning process, the aim usually is to develop and adopt a strategy resulting in a good fit between these internal and external factors. However, SWOT includes no means of analytically determining the importance of factors or of assessing the fit between SWOT factors and decision alternatives. In A'WOT, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and its eigenvalue calculation framework are integrated with SWOT analysis. The aim in applying the hybrid method is to improve the quantitative information basis of strategic planning processes. AHP’s connection to SWOT yields analytically–determined priorities for the factors included in SWOT analysis and makes them commensurable. In addition, decision alternatives can be evaluated with respect to each SWOT factor by applying the AHP. So, SWOT provides the basic frame within which to perform an analysis of the decision situation, and the AHP assists in carrying out SWOT more analytically and in elaborating the analysis so that alternative strategic decisions can be prioritised.

1. Introduction

SWOT (the acronym standing for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) is a widely applied tool in the analysis of internal and external environments in order to achieve a systematic approach and support for strategic decision situations (see, e.g., Wheelen and Hunger, 1995, Hill and Westbrook, 1997). The internal and external factors most important for the enterprise’s future are referred to as strategic factors. In SWOT these factors (called SWOT factors) are grouped into four categories called SWOT groups: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. By applying SWOT in a strategic planning process, the aim usually is to develop and adopt a strategy resulting in a good fit between the internal and external factors. SWOT can also be used when a strategy alternative suddenly emerges and the decision context relevant to it has to be analysed.

When used properly, SWOT can provide a good basis for strategy formulation. However, SWOT could be used more efficiently than normally has been the case in its applications (McDonald, 1993). When using SWOT, analysis lacks the possibility of comprehensively appraising the strategic decision making situation. It easily remains at the level of only pinpointing the factors. In addition, the expression of individual factors is often of a very general nature and brief (Hill and Westbrook, 1997). Furthermore, SWOT includes no means of analytically determining the importance of the factors or of assessing the decision alternatives with respect to the factors. The further utilisation of SWOT alone is, thus, mainly based on the qualitative analysis made in the planning process, and on the capabilities and expertise of the persons participating in the process. All in all, the result of SWOT analysis is too often only a listing or an incomplete qualitative examination of internal and external factors. This is why it has sometimes been referred to as "So WOT".

The idea in utilizing the AHP (Saaty, 1977,1980) within a SWOT framework is to systematically evaluate the SWOT factors and make them commensurable as regards their intensities (Kurttila et al., 2000). The AHP’s qualities can be regarded to be valuable characteristics in SWOT analysis. Additional value from a SWOT analysis can be achieved by performing pairwise comparisons between the SWOT factors and then analysing them by means of the eigenvalue technique as applied in the AHP. SWOT provides the basic frame within which to perform an analysis of the decision situation and AHP assists in carrying out SWOT more analytically. The hybrid method is called A'WOT.

After carrying out the comparisons, useful quantitative information can be obtained about the decision making situation. On grounds of the comparisons of the SWOT factors and groups it can be analysed, for example, whether there is a specific weakness requiring most of the attention, or if the company is expected to be faced with future threats exceeding the company’s combined opportunities (Kurttila et al., 2000). In addition, using A'WOT enables choice alternatives to be evaluated with respect to each SWOT factor and to each SWOT group (Pesonen et al., 2000). When the importance of different SWOT groups has also been determined, the choice alternatives can be prioritised with respect to the strategic choice situation as a whole.

2. Steps of the hybrid method A'WOT

The hybrid method A'WOT proceeds as follows:

(i) The SWOT analysis is carried out. The relevant factors of the external and internal environment are identified and included in SWOT analysis.

(ii) Pairwise comparisons between the SWOT factors are carried out separately within each SWOT group. When making the comparisons, the issue at stake is which of the two factors compared is more important and how much more important. With these comparisons as the input, the mutual priorities of the factors are computed.

(iii) The mutual importance of the SWOT groups are determined. There are several possibilities as to how to do this. For example, the factor with the highest priority may be chosen from each group, and these four factors are then compared pairwise and their relative priorities are calculated on the basis of the comparisons. After that, the other factors are scaled relatively to these priority values within each group. Another possibility is to directly compare the importance of the entire groups. In addition to these two simplest ways, more complicated procedures can be applied, if desired.

(iv) The strategy alternatives are evaluated with respect to each SWOT factor as in the AHP.

(v) Global priorities can now be calculated for the strategy alternatives in accordance with the general A'WOT decision hierarchy.

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