Proposing a new methodology for prioritising the investment strategies in the private sector of Iran

This article proposes a systematic and organised approach for group decision-making in the presence of the uncertainty involved in expert judgments as used in multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) issues. This procedure comprises the selection of the optimum alternative with respect to the evaluation criteria under consideration, in particular to select the strategy of investing. However, the selection of the investment strategy is difficult on account of considering the numerous quantitative and qualitative parameters like benefits, opportunities, costs, and risks. However, it is possible that these parameters have a significant influence on each other. A decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL), used to define the influential network of elements, can be employed to construct a network relationship map (NRM). On the other hand, according to whether the information is incomplete or unavailable, uncertainty is an inseparable part of making decision for solving the MCDM problems. Therefore, this article proposes a new hybrid model based on analytic hierarchical process (AHP), DEMATEL, and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) techniques under fuzzy environment to evaluate the problem of the selection of the investment strategy. To achieve the aim, a three-step process is presented to solve a sophisticated problem. First, the AHP method is employed to break down the investment problem into simple structure and calculate the importance weights of criteria by using a pair-wise comparison process. Second, the DEMATEL technique is applied for considering interdependence and dependencies and computing the global weights of benefit, opportunities, cost, and risk (BOCR) factors. Finally, the fuzzy TOPSIS methodology is used for prioritising the possible alternatives. To demonstrate the potential application of the proposed model, a numerical example is illustrated and investigated. The results show that the proposed model has a high ability to prioritise the strategies of investing.