engleski

IMPROVING SWOT ANALYSIS BY USING THE ANALYTICAL HIERARHY PROCESS

Te SWOT analysis is a widely applied tool in strategic decision support. Te SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Treats en-compassing the internal and external factors that are the most important for the enterprise’s future. By applying the SWOT analysis 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 analyti-cally 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. Te 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 prioritized.

SWOT, AHP, A’WOT, strategic planning, strategic management

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