A Model for Measuring Institutionalization Level of SMEs

Institutionalization help an organization to gain legitimacy, increase resources and maintain survival. In other words, institutionalization is realized by developing appropriate and meaningful behaviors with the environment to gain legitimacy and conformity and transferring them to next generations. It is a crucial issue especially for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to adopt themselves according to the changes in the environment, and sustain competitive. In this study, fuzzy hybrid multi-criteria decision making approach is used in order to measure institutionalization level of SMEs. For achieving this, first of all, criteria that indicate the institutionalization level of SMEs are determined. Then cause and effect interaction among main criteria is determined by fuzzy DEMATEL method. According to the inter influence derived from fuzzy DEMATEL, fuzzy analytic network process (ANP) is implemented in order to obtain the weights of the criteria. Expert opinions and group decision making approach are utilized during both fuzzy DEMATEL and fuzzy ANP methods. After acquiring the weights, several SMEs are evaluated according to the criteria predefined and VIKOR method is implemented for measuring the level of institutionalization of the SMEs.