Textual Analysis for Developing Fuzzy Cognitive Maps - The Case of Strategy Maps

Abstract

Expert opinions have been applied to construct fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs) to support the process of strategic planning. FCMs are beneficial tool to represent strategy maps due to their capacity to model causal-effect relationships among the key strategy concepts. To overcome the problem of rather subjective expert evaluation of the relationships, automatic knowledge acquisition is preferable. Moreover, the causaleffect relationships evolve dynamically and are context-specific. Here, the knowledge acquisition is performed to obtain knowledge on causal strategic concepts. This knowledge is extracted from strategic documents. This approach has two major steps. First, latent semantic analysis is employed to obtain an interpretable semantic model. Second, collocated causal concepts are used to model relationships among strategic concepts. This approach also requires theoretical background literature/domain experts to determine the direction of the causalities. The generated FCMs can subsequently be used to simulate the effects of strategic management and, thus, provide an effective decision support tool. Several innovation strategies of regions for two periods are used as a case study. To verify the proposed approach, it is demonstrated that the generated FCMs are consistent with expert opinions and fuzzy ANP method. The analysis of the dynamic evolution of the FCMs also shows how strategic priorities change over time.