Gap Analysis Through a Hybrid Method: Critical Systems Heuristics and Best Worst Method

In research on soft and emancipatory operations research, the lack of attention to the measurement and analyzing the differences stands as one of the significant weaknesses of qualitative approaches. Tackling this weakness may be very effective, and clearly, the more we know about measures and differences, the easier we will make decisions at later stages. This study mainly aims to design a hybrid method to find the gaps in various systems that can be criticized and investigated by critical approaches. Options and critiques are explored in the Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) method as one of the methods for investigating the current and ideal condition of the system. Nevertheless, many options and critiques obtained from CSH remain without further quantitative assessments and sometimes might not be comprehensively assessed. Even in some cases, the options presented in the ideal conditions are more unfavourable than the current situation, but they may be regarded as an option for improvement due to their critical aspect because of the mental bias of decision-makers. The proposed hybrid method weighs and assesses the options and critiques raised in each question (Boundary Group) achieved from CSH using the capabilities of the best-worst method (BWM), providing a tool for quantitative assessment and avoiding decision-makers bias.