An integrated stochastic fuzzy MCDM approach to the balanced scorecard-based service evaluation

Highlights

• The model includes fuzzy ANP, Monte Carlo Simulation, fuzzy TOPSIS, and fuzzy VIKOR.

• Comparative analysis is coherent for ranking the alternatives and the stochastic values.

• Foreign banks have lower performance in comparison with state and private banks.

• New service development process increases the competitive power.

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to analyse the balanced scorecard (BSC)-based evaluation of the new service development (NSD) in Turkish banking sector. The proposed model includes fuzzy ANP (FANP), Monte Carlo Simulation, fuzzy TOPSIS (FTOPSIS), and fuzzy VIKOR (FVIKOR) respectively. FANP has been used for weighting the criteria, Monte Carlo Simulation has been applied to provide the stochastic values of BSC-based dimensions of NSD in banking sector. FTOPSIS and FVIKOR have been considered to rank the banks by their dimension performances. The novelty of the study is to provide an integrated model including FANP, FTOPSIS, FVIKOR, and Monte Carlo Simulation respectively. Additionally, BSC-based analysis of NSD has been applied for evaluating Turkish banking sector. The results demonstrate that the comparative analysis is coherent for ranking the alternatives and the stochastic values facilitate to obtain the immense expert evaluations under the fuzzy environment. It is identified that the performance of the foreign banks is lower than private and state banks. Hence, it can be said that especially foreign banks should develop new services to attract the attention of their customers. Within this framework, customer expectations should be defined by conducting a detailed analysis. As a result, it can be possible to increase comparative advantage in comparison with the other banks.

Introduction

By the globalization, the use of knowledge makes the multinational firms efficient and it eases to monitor the competitive policies in determining strategy includes versatile information for the production and service sector. Due to the effective use of information, the companies have some opportunities to determine the adequacy of the service and products in the commercialization process. Accordingly, knowledge-based system which is called the new economy has allowed the globalized firms to use the multifaced data obtained from the customers and other participants by the beginning of the 1990s.

Moreover, ease of reaching the information and communication technologies with the new economy has enhanced the importance of analysing the existing internal and external environmental data in the incremental and radical innovation and development process. In the increasing competitive environment, the product development processes have begun to host the service development processes by the 1980s. Thus, the new economic process to emphasize a sustainable progress for each stage of the NSD process from the design to the commercialization in the interactive way.

Similarly, multidimensional assessment of innovative strategies and decisions on the NSD in the service industry is a novel issue in the competitive market environment. The critical success factors of innovative service thinking are defined in the strategy and knowledge management, process formulation [3]. Several factors such as strategy, formalized development process, integrated development teams, and customer interaction are highly related to examine the key strategic factors in developing new services [28].

Nowadays, some research interests arise to gain the advantages of the globalized service quality improvement. Organizational competency is one of the prominent issues in the NSD. Interaction in the organizational team increases the expertise for the service improvement [78]. Thus, innovative thoughts are highly valuable by considering functional teams, and learning orientation processes. Additionally, the internal and external integration practises bring the achievement on the new service applications, despite some costs in the idea generation stage [35] and interventional culture is an influential factor in the development of new services within the learning culture [76]. Another important debate in the service development is customer-oriented innovation policies. The active role of customers at each stage contributes to creating the service innovation [15] with social networks [73], learning alignment [79], harmony between client and directly related personnel in the NSD.

Because of the recent interests in the NSD, the dynamic innovation policies towards the service development process, especially the suitability of NSD process, are more closely used in the multidimensional perspective defining the internal and external factors of competitive business environment for the new economic requirements. Consequently, the NSD process needs to be redesigned by considering BSC approach to include the customer, financial outcomes, organizational factors, and learning and growth factors concurrently [44], [45], [77]. Accordingly, BSC-based performance measurement is one of unique technique that provides the multifaceted perspectives for the service and quality improvement in the fierce competitive conditions. Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is frequently used for evaluating the complex real-world problems. Especially, stochastic modelling provides several extensions in the sophisticated decision-making process [53], [80], [100]. However, the stochastic extensions to MCDM are extremely limited under the fuzzy environment [41], [83], [98].

This study proposes a novel approach to stochastic fuzzy decision-making process with the integrated modelling. For this purpose, the FANP have been applied for weighting the criteria, the FVIKOR and TOPSIS have been used for ranking the banks. Accordingly, Monte Carlo simulation has been adapted to the hybrid fuzzy decision-making process for providing the stochastic values of the BSC-based dimensions for the NSD competencies in Turkish banking sector. Hence, using simulation approach gives opportunity to increase the number of decision makers (DM) stochastically. In this study, FANP is preferred instead of fuzzy AHP because it considers the conditions under the assumption of innerdependency of the factors. Also, the main reason of choosing FVIKOR and FTOPSIS is that they are coherent and frequently used approaches. Additionally, with the help of Monte Carlo analysis, high numbers of expert opinions can be taken into the consideration with stochastic data.

Hence, it can be said that this study has many novelties. First of all, it is the first study in which FANP, FVIKOR and FTOPSIS approaches are considered with simulation methodology. In addition to this issue, Monte Carlo simulation technique is firstly considered in order to calculate the stochastic values for the dimensions. Moreover, this new model is taken into the consideration firstly for the banking sector. As a result, it is obvious that the results provide significant opportunities for both researchers and experts with respect to the strategy development in new service generation process. Thus, this study is intended to contribute to the literature.

In this study, five different sections are stated. In this introduction section, general information about the concept is given. The second section presents the current literature and research interest in the NSD. The following section discusses methodology of the stochastic hybrid fuzzy decision-making approach. Additionally, the fourth section provides the model construction and analysis results. Finally, the last section highlights the results and recommendations of the study.