seyedeh elahe adel rastkhiz; Ali Mobini Dehkordi; jahangir yadollahi farsi
Volume 23, Issue 1 , April 2019, , Pages 75-97
Abstract
Evaluating entrepreneurial opportunities exemplifies the decision-making under conditions of uncertainty. These evaluations mainly have been done in a complex and dynamic environment under true uncertainty. In contrast to risk and ambiguity, in true uncertainty not only all potential outcomes and their ...
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Evaluating entrepreneurial opportunities exemplifies the decision-making under conditions of uncertainty. These evaluations mainly have been done in a complex and dynamic environment under true uncertainty. In contrast to risk and ambiguity, in true uncertainty not only all potential outcomes and their assigned probabilities are unknown, but also it is not possible easily to estimate the probabilities and acquire knowledge about the results. In these situations, entrepreneurs evaluate opportunities based on minimal and inaccurate information, which is described by fuzzy variables, i.e. linguistic variables that do not have any clear boundaries. Hence, adopting a fuzzy approach, the purpose of this paper is to propose a model for evaluating entrepreneurial opportunities under conditions of uncertainty. This study is the first using fuzzy screening to formulate opportunity evaluation as a Multi-Expert Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (ME-MCDM) problem and it is innovative in this research area. In doing so, first, through a systematic literature review and focus group the authors identified entrepreneurs’ current solutions for evaluating opportunities under true uncertainty. Then, a ME-MCDM model has been suggested to evaluate opportunities and select between them. The model is based on fuzzy screening method and evaluates 12 opportunities by 15 experts in a medium entrepreneurial firm. R software has been used to perform calculations. With regard to experts’ aggregate evaluations, findings show that O6 and O11 have higher rating (better evaluation) among opportunities and considered as appropriate candidates for pursuing.
