Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management

A method for generating strategy maps using ANP

Luis Ernesto Quezada and Pedro Ivan Palominos Rosa E. Galleguillos Alexis H. Olmedo
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JMTM
25,8
A method for generating
strategy maps using ANP
Luis Ernesto Quezada and Pedro Ivan Palominos
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Santiago of Chile,
1090 Santiago, Chile, and
Received 12 October 2013 Rosa E. Galleguillos and Alexis H. Olmedo
Revised 1 April 2014 Faculty of Engineering, Andres Bello University, Santiago, Chile
Downloaded by UNIVERSIDAD DE SANTIAGO DE CHILE At 07:52 13 October 2014 (PT)

15 June 2014
Accepted 24 June 2014
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a method for identifying causal relationships
in a strategy map.
Design/methodology/approach A strategy map is a visual representation of the strategy of
a company, which includes the strategic objectives of a company and the cause-effect relationships
between them. Its network structure facilitates its representation as an analytic network process
(ANP) model. The proposed method starts with a network with all possible relationships and then
it deletes those relationships, which are not important. To do this, it uses the techniques of the
ANP approach.
Findings It was found that ANP is a good tool for modelling a strategy map and for identifying the
important relationships of a strategy map. A study case of a manufacturing is shown to illustrate
how the proposed method can be used in practice.
Practical implications Normally, the cause-effect relationships between strategic objectives are
generated in a subjective way. Even this way of working is widely accepted in practice, some studied
have shown that the declared relationships are not necessarily valid. The proposed method provides
a quantitative tool to establish the relationships between strategic objectives, which are obtained
using a method (ANP) that has a strong conceptual base. This is an indication that the strategy map
obtained represents in a better way the strategy of the company.
Originality/value ANP is a methodology which is used to estimate the priority of nodes with in
a network. In this work ANP is used to estimate the priority of the arcs of the network. The results of
application in a company represent a good indication that the method may be implemented in other
manufacturing companies.
Keywords Balanced scorecard, Strategy map, Analytic network process, Strategic objectives
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
The balanced scorecard (BSC) developed by Kaplan and Norton (1992, 1996) is a
performance measurement system which has been very popular in the literature as
well as in practice. According to the authors it has become a strategic management tool
(Kaplan and Norton, 2001a, b).
One of the components of a BSC is the strategy map, which is a representation of the
causal relationships between strategic objectives of the organization. According to
Kaplan and Norton (2004) a strategy map is a representation of the strategy of the firm.

Journal of Manufacturing Technology

Management
Vol. 25 No. 8, 2014 This paper was submitted to a special issue on ICPR Americas 2012, Guest Edited by Edson
pp. 1090-1104 Pinheiro de Lima.
r Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1741-038X This work was supported by the University of Santiago of Chile (Project DICYT-USACH
DOI 10.1108/JMTM-06-2014-0081 No. 060517QLL).
 In their review, Gomes et al. (2004), Neely (2005) and Nudurupati et al. (2011) Generating
emphasize the importance of the BSC in the literature on performance measurement strategy maps
systems and they also point out that it has been very popular among practitioners.
The main contribution of the BSC is the use of four perspectives to define strategic using ANP
objectives and performance measures: Financial, Internal Processes, Clients and Growth
and Learning, which are aligned to the mission and strategy of the organization.
A strategy map is an important element of a BSC (Kaplan and Norton, 1996, 2004). 1091
Authors such as Littler et al. (2000) and Quezada et al. (2009) have focused on the
identification of the performance indicators (KPIs), but the literature on the identification
of the relationships is rather limited as described below. In fact, an analysis of the authors
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of this paper has concluded that the journal papers and books by Kaplan and Norton do
not address the issue. This is the motivation of the work presented in this paper.
Figure 1 illustrates an example of a strategy map. The nodes represent the strategic
objectives and the directed arcs represent the cause-effect relationships between
strategic objectives. An arc between a strategic objective A and a strategic objective B
means that if the objective A is achieved then objective B may also be achieved.
However, Nrreklit (2000) argues that Kaplan and Norton (1996) are not clear in the
meaning of the concept of causal relationship. She states that more than causal
relationships, what the BSC describes are logical relationships. Nrreklit (2003) also
expresses that some cause-and-effect relationship presented in a BSC may be not true. In
the same direction, Bessire and Baker (2005) state that the relationships of the BSC may be
a plausible chain of events, but the relationships are a simplification of the real world.
This paper presents a quantitative method for identifying the causal relationships
between strategic objectives. It is based on a multi-criteria decision system, the
analytic network process (ANP), which is a generalization of the analytic hierarchy
process (AHP), both developed by Saaty (1994, 2001). Both, ANP and AHP, are
explained briefly below. This paper is an extension of the work developed by Quezada
and Quintero (2011), which used AHP to model a strategy map. The main limitation of
their method is the fact that it can be only applied when the strategy map can be
modelled as a hierarchy. In that circumstance, dependence and feedback cannot
be considered in the model, even they may be present in a BSC.
Quantitative studies have been found in the literature regarding making use of
quantitative models for performance measurement. One is developed by Bititci et al. (2001)

Financial
Perspective

Clients
Perspective

Internal
Processes
Perspective

Growth and
Learning
Figure 1.
Perspective
A strategy map
 JMTM who propose a quantitative model for performance measurement system (QMPSM) to
25,8 evaluate strategies. They use the AHP to quantify the relationship between various
factors affecting performance. Sarkis (2003) uses ANP to incorporate more complex
relationships in a way to improve the Bitticis model. Abran and Buglione (2003)
criticize the not existence of a quantitative representation of the perspectives that
would allow a consolidation of the perspectives.
1092 Authors, such as Cheng and Li (2001), Yurdakul (2003), Temur et al. (2007)
and Karpak and Topcu (2010) prioritize performance measures using AHP or ANP.
Yurdakul and Ic (2005) proposed another performance measurement model, which uses
AHP and Techniques for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS),
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to rank companies within an industry. All these authors propose quantitative models
with a given number of performance measures.
There are papers that use AHP or ANP to model a BSC. Some of them are the works
done by Leung et al. (2006), Huang et al. (2011), Torres et al. (2013), Tseng (2010), Yuksel
and Dagdeviren (2010), Wang and Xia (2009) and Lee et al. (1995). The aim of all these
papers is getting the importance of objectives or strategies in a BSC. None of them
intend to get the importance of the causal relationships.
As stated above, this work uses the ANP. In all the papers in which AHP and ANP
have been used in performance measurement, the objective has been to find the priority
of the nodes of the model, but in this case the objective is to find the priorities of the arcs
(relationships). The advantage of using ANP is that it has a strong conceptual and
mathematical base and has been subject to many studies. ANP not only involves
complex calculations of matrices, but it is also based on a strong conceptual base in
which the behaviour of decision makers has been considered (Saaty, 1994, 2001).
Only few studies address the issue of designing a strategy map. One was the
conceptual method proposed by Kunc (2008). The method is based on systems thinking
(Senge, 1999) to develop causal relationships and to understand them. He emphasizes
the importance of the use of cause-effects relationships in performance measurement
systems. He also, in response to those authors that have criticized the BSC and strategy
maps, establishes that they have not made any proposal to overcome those criticisms.
On a different approach, Jassbi et al. (2011) and Wu (2012) use the Decision Making
Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) technique to create a strategy map.
However, their studies have some limitations. Even though Jassbi et al. (2011) develop
their method, they do not explain how to derive the strategy map after applying
DEMATEL. In the case of Wu (2012), the strategy map he presents does not meet the
conceptual relationships that should exist in a strategy map.

2. The method
2.1 ANP representation of a BSC
The proposed method aims at identifying the causal relationships of a strategy map of a
BSC. For doing this, the method uses the ANP to model the strategy map. Basically, what
the method does is to estimate the importance of the relationships and then it selects
those relationships that are considered as important according to a defined criterion.
ANP is an extension of AHP. In the case of AHP, the decision problem has to be
represented as a hierarchy, limitation that is removed in ANP. An ANP model consists
of a network of nodes which are grouped into clusters.
In the case of this research, clusters represent the perspectives of a BSC, nodes
represent the strategic objectives and arcs represent the cause-effect relationships.
Figure 2 shows the ANP model associated to the strategy map of Figure 1. It should be
 Generating
Financial
Perspective
strategy maps
using ANP

Clients
Perspective 1093

Internal
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Processes
Perspective

Growth and
Learning
Perspective Figure 2.
ANP model of a BSC

noted that the arcs in the ANP model are in the opposite direction than those in the
strategy map.
This work assumes that the organization has defined the strategic objectives of the
firm previously and has classified them into the BSC perspectives. The objective of
qthe method is to find those causal relationships between the strategic objectives.
For doing this, the method starts with a network that includes all possible arcs and
then those which are not important are eliminated from the network, resulting in
a strategy map of the firm.

2.2 How ANP works

The aim of ANP is to find the priorities of the nodes of the network representing
a decision problem. Normally, one of the cluster contains the decision alternatives,
so when their priorities are obtained, then the decision problem is solved. It is not the
purpose of this paper to describe the way ANP works, so only a brief description is given.
In Figure 3 A and B are Clusters. Let us consider a node Z of Cluster A. All the nodes of
Cluster B are pairwise compared in relation to node Z. This is done using the fundamental
scale of AHP (Saaty, 1994), which goes from 1 (equally important) to 9 (extremely more
important). The pairwise comparison between two any nodes X and Y of Cluster B in
relation to node Z is carried out answering the question how much more important is
the strategic objective X than the strategic objective Y for achieving the strategic
objective Z? These values are the entries of what is called a comparison matrix. AHP is
used to obtain the priority (or importance) of all the nodes of Cluster B in relation to the
node Z of Cluster. This procedure is repeated for every node of Cluster A.

Cluster A Z

Cluster B Figure 3.
X Y Nodes and clusters
 JMTM It is necessary to point out that the direction of arrows is important. In this case,
25,8 an arrow going from node Z to node X means than in the strategy map objective
X affects objective Z.
Let:
wnm
ij is the importance of node i of Cluster n in relation to node j of Cluster m, 8 i, j,
n, m; and Wnm {wnm j
ij }i is the block of priorities of Cluster n in relation to Cluster m.
1094 All the blocks Wnm are input into what is called supermatrix. ANP calculate
the limiting power of the supermatrix, leading to a limiting supermatrix containing
the global priorities of the nodes within Clusters.
Let:
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d mj is the priority of node j of Cluster m 8 j, m

Obviously:
X
d jm 1 8 m 1
j

It means that the sum of the priority of all the nodes within a Cluster is 1.
The supermatrix has the structure shown in Table I. In the last row, the priorities of
the nodes have been included. Due to the fact that a BSC has four perspectives, four
Clusters have been considered, even though more perspectives may be considered.

2.3 Description of the method

The objective of an ANP model is to obtain the priority of the nodes of the clusters,
particularly of the cluster representing the nodes with the decision alternatives. In this
work, the objective is different; it is to obtain the importance of the arcs (causal
relationships between objectives).
The steps of the method are:
Step 0: identification of the strategic objectives. This is a previous step. The strategic
objectives of the firm are identified. This may be done using the methodology
proposed by Kaplan and Norton (1996).
Step 1: construction of the ANP model. The strategic objectives are grouped into
the four perspectives of the BSC. These perspectives will correspond to the
clusters of the model.
Then all the nodes are connected between them using directed arcs. If the number of
nodes of the network is n then maximum number of directed arcs is n(n 1), which
may become a large number. Only those arcs that potentially may correspond to
a causal relationship should be considered. In this way, the number of arcs in the
network is reduced.
Step 2: pairwise comparison. Pairwise comparisons are carried out as described
above. The objective is to obtain the importance of all nodes of one cluster in

m1 m2 m3 m4

n1 W11 W12 W13 W14

n2 W21 W22 W23 W24
n3 W31 W32 W33 W33
Table I. n4 W41 W42 W43 W44
The supermatrix D1 D2 D3 D4
 relation to every node of all other clusters. It is important to point out that Generating
the nodes of the clusters also have to be pairwise compared with the nodes strategy maps
of the same cluster to consider inner dependence.
using ANP
Step 3: priority calculations. The pairwise comparison process is used to build the
comparison matrices and to obtain the corresponding priorities, which are
input into the supermatrix. The proposed method uses the priorities of
the relationships included in the supermatrix and the priorities of the nodes 1095
obtained from the limiting supermatrix.
Step 4: importance relationship calculation. In this work, we are interested in obtaining
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the importance of the relationships. AHP and ANP are used to estimate the
priority (importance) of every strategic objective of the strategy map, from
the supermatrix.
The matrix of Table I is weighed as follows:
anm m nm nm
ij dj wij bij 8 i; j; n; m 2
bnm
ij is the number of nodes in Cluster n connected to node i of Cluster m.
Finally, the resulting matrix is weighed again in order to normalize the priorities of
all the nodes related to a cluster:
X
enm nm
ij aij = anm
ij 8 i; j; n; m 3
in
The normalization means that:
XX
enm
ij 1 4
n i

Step 5: selection of important relationships. The aim of this step is selecting those
relationships that are important. The method consists in selecting all those
directed arcs that leave a cluster and have an accumulated relative importance
of 80 per cent.
To this the following method is used:
Do m 1
Take all the elements of the blocks Wn1, Wn2, Wn3 and Wn4
Sort all their entries elements in a descending way.
Select those entries of that account for the 80 per cent.
Do m m 1 and repeat cycle until j 4.
Step 6: analysis of network. There is always the possibility that the resulting network
has nodes which are not connected, which is not allowed in a strategy map.
If a node belonging to the Clusters 1, 2 or 3 does not have any relationship with
a subsequent cluster, then its arc with the highest priority is added. If a node
belonging to the Clusters 2, 3 or 4 does not have any relationship with
a preceding cluster then the incoming arc with the highest priority is added.

3. An illustration
3.1 Description
This illustration is based on a real case. The firm is a small printing company. The
products and services include both design and printing. Some specific products are
printing of brochures, books and magazines.
 JMTM The company expresses its vision as To become a leading company in Graphical
25,8 Arts in the region by offering a service that exceeds the expectations of our clients and
by innovating in our processes and products. Its mission is expresses as To transform
the communications needs of our clients in images through the design, processes and
technology with the purpose of becoming an important factor in the evolution of means
of communication.
1096 A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis along with the
mission and the vision of the company has allowed the definition of the strategic
objectives, which has been classified into the four dimensions of the BSC:
(1) Financial perspective:
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. Reduce costs (A);

. Increase incomes (B); and
. Improve return on investment (C).
(2) Clients perspectives:
. Improve customers loyalty (D);
. Improve satisfaction of clients (E); and
. Improve quality of service (F).
(3) Internal process perspective:
. Improve flexibility (G);
. Improve operational processes (H); and
. Increase productivity (I).
(4) Growth and learning perspective:
. Improve work place ( J);
. Improve workers competencies (K); and
. Improve motivation (L).
The process was carried out with the participation of the general manager, the operations
manager, the marketing manager and the finances manager. There were also people who
supporting the process. The matrices used in ANP were filled in by consensus in order to
create a discussion about the strategic issues involved in the process.
3.2 The initial ANP model
This is the Step 1 of the method. The initial ANP model consists of the set of strategic
objectives grouped into the four perspectives of the BSC. The node mission (M) has
been added in order to estimate the importance of the financial perspective. In order to
reduce the number of arcs of the initial network, managers were asked to include only
those causal relationships that potentially may be valid. Figure 4 depicts the initial ANP
model representing the strategic map of the company under study. As it can be seen, the
model is not hierarchical and that there are relationships within the same cluster.
3.3 Pairwise comparison
The second step of the method consists of performing pairwise comparisons between
nodes in order to obtain the priorities. These comparisons are carried out by the
managers of the company. As an example, Table II shows the comparison matrix of the
 M Generating
strategy maps
using ANP
A B C

1097
D E F
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G H I

J K L
Figure 4.
Initial ANP model

Improve clients loyalty
Increase satisfaction
Improve quality of service
Table II.
Comparison matrix of
Increase clients satisfaction Improve quality of service Priority nodes of clients
perspective in relation to
1 4 0.8 objective Improve clients
1/4 1 0.2 loyalty

strategic objectives of financial perspective in relation to the strategic objective

Improve the utilization of assets. It should be noted that in this case two nodes are
compared against a node within the same cluster.
As another example, Table III shows the comparison matrix of strategic objectives
of perspective of clients in relation to the strategic objective Increase Income of the
financial perspective. It should be noted that three nodes are compared against
the achievement of an objective belonging to a different perspective. This comparison
matrix specifies that Quality of service is three times more important than
customers loyalty to achieve the objective of Increase incomes.
The column Priority was obtained from the comparison matrix of Table II using
AHP (Saaty, 1994). This vector has to be included within the column associated to the
strategic objective Improve clients loyalty (D) of the supermatrix.
In the same way, the column Priority of Table III was obtained from the
comparison matrix. This vector has to be included within the column associated
to the strategic objective Increase income (B) of the supermatrix. It is important
to point out at this stage that it is necessary to check consistency of the responses.
This is doing by calculating the consistency ratio (CR) of every comparison matrix,
which must be less than 0.1.

Table III.
Increase income Customers loyalty Satisfaction of clients Quality of service Priority Comparison matrix
of nodes of clients
Customers loyalty 1 1/3 1/3 0.13965 perspective in relation
Satisfaction of clients 3 1 2 0.52784 to objective Increase
Quality of service 3 1/2 1 0.33252 incomes
 JMTM 3.4 The supermatrix
25,8 The construction of the supermatrix is the third step of the method. Table IV shows
the supermatrix of the network, which contains all the priorities obtained from the
comparison matrices. As it can be seen, the priority columns of Tables II and III have
been input into columns D and B of the supermatrix, respectively. An entry of
the supermatrix with a value 0 means that there is not an arc associated to the
1098 relationship. For example, in the position (D, J) with a value of 0 means that there is no
directed arc from J to I node.

3.5 Selection of important relationships

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The Step 4 of the method is the calculation of the importance of the relationships,
which are shown in Figure 5. The figure depicts the supermatrix in which its columns
have been weighed by their corresponding priority (shown in the last row of the
Table IV) and by the number of relationships. For example, the priorities (0.2 and 0.8) of
the Column C are weighed by 0.36975 and 2, while the priorities (0.660761, 0.131112
and 0.208127) in the Column D are weighed by 0.16854 and 3.
The Step 5 is the selection of important relationships. The entries of the matrix
were grouped into the four perspectives of the BSC (clusters) and then they were
normalized, so the sum of all the values within a group is 1.0. In each group, those
entries with an accumulated value of 80 per cent were selected as important.
They have been highlighted in Figure 5. It should be noted that the fourth group
have only zeros, which is because there are not any arc going out from the growth &
learning perspective. As an example, the directed arcs A-H, A-I, B-E, B-F, C-D and
C-I account for the 80 per cent of the accumulated importance of all the entries of
the first group. In Figure 5 the node Mission has been removed, because it was
only considered for taking into account the importance of the nodes of the financial
perspective.
It should be noted that in this application it was not necessary to apply the Step 6
of the method. This is because all the nodes have a connection to some other node.
Figure 6 depicts the ANP model that considers only those arcs representing important
relationships.

4. The strategy map

The strategy map is derived directly from the ANP model of Figure 6, in which
the strategic objectives are the nodes and the relationships are the arcs of the network.
The strategy map of the firm is depicted in Figure 7. It should be noted that the arcs
were changed to the opposite directions.
This map indicates, for example, that if the competencies and the motivation of the
employees are improved then the productivity may improve. In the same way, to
improve the satisfaction of the clients, it is necessary to improve the flexibility of the
production process.
After the completion of the process, managers were asked about their opinion
regarding the criteria of Usability (Was it understood?), Feasibility (Was it followed
easily?) and Utility (Was it useful?), defined by Platts (1994). They declared that
they understood the process, however it was necessary an initial session to explain it.
They also declared that it was easy to follow, but they argued that it was time
consuming. Finally, they agreed that the process was very useful. In fact, they stated
that the obtained strategy map represented the strategy of the firm.
 Downloaded by UNIVERSIDAD DE SANTIAGO DE CHILE At 07:52 13 October 2014 (PT)

Financial Clients Internal processes Growth and learning

Perspective Node A B C D E F G H I J K L Mission

A 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.2
Financial B 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.4
C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.4
D 0 0.139648 0.539615 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Clients E 0 0.527836 0.296961 0.8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
F 0 0.332516 0.163429 0.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
G 0.117221 0 0.660761 0.660761 0.208127 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Internal
process H 0.268369 0 0.2 0.131112 0.131112 0.660761 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
I 0.614411 0 0.8 0.208127 0.2081270 0.131112 0 0 0 0 0 0
J 0 0 0 0 0 0.686981 0.708856 0.091403 0 0 0 0
Growth and
learning K 0 0 0 0 0 0.126543 0.17862 0.217639 0 0 0 0
L 0 0 0 0 0 0.186475 0.112524 0.690354 0 0 0 0
Mission M 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Priority 0.27731 0.36975 0.33294 0.16854 0.4043 0.42716 0.25216 0.35857 0.38927 0.46298 0.18068 0.35634 0

Supermatrix
Generating
strategy maps

Table IV.
1099
using ANP
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25,8

1100
JMTM

Figure 5.
Weighed Supermatrix
Financial Clients Internal Processes Growth and Learning
Perspective Node A B C D E F G H I J K L
A 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Financial B 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
D 0 0.03932 0.13683 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Clients E 0 0.14864 0.07530 0.15755 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
F 0 0.09364 0.04144 0.03938 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
G 0.02475 0 0 0.13013 0.31217 0.10388 0 0 0 0 0 0
Internal Processes H 0.05668 0 0.05071 0.02582 0.06194 0.32982 0 0 0 0 0 0
I 0.12977 0 0.20286 0.04098 0.09832 0.06544 0 0 0 0 0 0
J 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.17322 0.25417 0.03558 0 0 0
Growth and Learning K 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.03190 0.06404 0.08472 0 0 0
L 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.04702 0.04034 0.26896 0 0 0
 Generating
A B C
strategy maps
using ANP

D E F 1101
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G H I

Figure 6.
Network with important
J K L relationships

Financial
Perspective Reduce costs Increase Increase
income return

Clients Increase
Increase Increase
Perspective quality
clients satisfaction
loyalty

Internal
Processes Increase Improve Improve
Perspective flexibility production productivity
process

Growth and
Learning Improve Figure 7.
Improve work Improve
Perspective motivation
place competencie Strategy map of the firm

5. Managerial and practical implications

Kaplan and Norton (1996, 2004) have declared that the strategy map is important,
because it is a way of describing the strategy of the company. However, the way of
constructing it has not been widely dealt in the literature. Normally, the cause-effect
relationships between strategic objectives are generated in a subjective way. Even
this way of working is widely accepted in practice, some studied have shown that the
declared relationships are not necessarily valid. In order to overcome this situation,
the proposed method provides a quantitative tool (ANP) to establish the relationships
 JMTM between strategic objectives. The advantage of using ANP is that it allows the inclusion
25,8 of dependence and feedback of strategic objectives and perspectives in the map.
From the practical point of view, the method presented is a good alternative for
designing a strategy map of a company, which uses an approach (ANP) that has been
successfully in other areas of management. From the research point of view, it opens
new possibilities for research. One is the application in other companies in order to
1102 generalize the results obtained in the cases studied. Another area for research is the
definition and analysis of other criteria for considering a relationship as important.

6. Conclusions
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This paper presented a quantitative method to establish the causal relationships

between strategic objectives of a strategy map of a BSC. It uses the ANP to get those
relationships. The method starts with an initial ANP model represented all possible
causal relationship between objectives. Then it uses a criterion to select those
relationships that are important. In practice, the construction of a strategy map has
been done usually using the experience and judgment of the managers of companies.
This paper supports that process by using a multi-criteria system, which has a strong
conceptual and mathematical base.
The method was applied in a small printing company. The managers found the
method useful, because the obtained strategy maps representing the strategy of the
company. However, they criticized the method in the sense that it was time consuming.
It is not possible at this stage to make general conclusion about the proposed
methodology, because it is required to make more applications. It is also necessary to
prove different criteria to define the meaning of important relationship.

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Further reading
Yang, C.H., Chen, J.C., Shyu, J.Z. and Tzeng, G.H. (2008), Causal relationship analysis based
on DEMATEL technique for innovative policies in SMEs, PICMET 2008 Proceedings,
Cape Town, 27-31 July.

About the authors

Dr Luis Ernesto Quezada (MSc, PhD) is an Associate Professor at the University of Santiago
of Chile (USACH). His interests include strategic management, operations management and
multi-criteria analysis. He has published in journal such as the International Journal of
Production Economics and International Journal of Industrial Engineering. Dr Luis Ernesto
Quezada is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: luis.quezada@usach.cl
Dr Pedro Ivan Palominos (MSc, PhD) is an Associate Professor at the University of Santiago
of Chile (USACH). His interests include operations management and scheduling. He has
published in journal such as the International Journal of Production Economics and International
Journal of Production Research.
Professor Rosa E. Galleguillos (MSc) is an Instructor Professor at the University Andres Bello
(UNAB). Her interests include strategic management, operations management, operation
research and multi-criteria analysis. She is an Assistant Director of Industrial Engineering at the
University Andres Bello.
Alexis H. Olmedo (MSc) is an Instructor Professor at the University Andres Bello (UNAB).
His interests include strategic management, operations management, operation research and
multi-criteria analysis. He is the Director of Industrial Engineering at the University Andres Bello.

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