Partner selection in strategic alliances using a combination of Multiple Attribute Decision making methods (Case study: an oil consortium)

The oil consortium in Iran is one of the most important approaches to implementing the huge projects of the petrochemical industry. But the selection of suitable and expert partners is one of the most common bottlenecks in such cooperation networks. The purpose of this paper is to provide a practical, yet simple, solution for the decision makers to be able to choose the right candidate from the selected candidates. For this purpose, a three-stage model has been designed. In the first stage, the criteria affecting the choice of partner from the perspective of experts and reviewing the literature were first collected and weighed with the help of SWARA method. In the next stage, the ranking of partners (6 domestic and 4 foreign companies) was based on a set of decision-making methods such as COPRAS, VIKORA, SWA, TOPSIS, ARAS, MOORA, and multi-MOORA. The final stage integrated the ranking results based on the Copeland. In the end, financial capability and debt ratio and repayment potential were introduced as the most important criteria and sub-criteria. Also, partner 3 was selected as the best candidate by Copeland. Finally, in order to measure the performance of the integration of results, the Spearman correlation coefficient was used and the results of high test affinity and integration of results were obtained. Therefore, it can be said that the approach used has performed well.