A hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach for R&D strategic alliance partner selection

Technological alliances have become a popular strategy to cope with competitive pressures, short product life cycles, high research and development (R&D) costs and entry barriers. Firms gain access to complementary technologies, insulate from environmental uncertainty, increase knowledge base, access new markets and preserve leadership by using strategic alliances. In this regard, this study aims to establish a framework for R&D strategic alliance partner selection by utilizing a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach. In this way, at first, related R&D strategic alliance partner selection criteria are collected from existing literature, and then by using the best-worst method (BWM), which is a novel MCDM method, the weights of these criteria are calculated. After that by using the COPRAS method, available partners for R&D strategic alliance, ranked, and the best ones introduced. The calculation procedure for the weighting and evaluation processes are proposed and validated by using an illustrative example of Iran’s aviation industry. The proposed approach also provides a relatively simple and well-suited decision-making tool for this type of strategic decision-making problem.