Designing the Strategic Structure Model of Small and Start-up Businesses Using the Fuzzy Interpretive Structural Modeling Approach

Managers and owners of small businesses often spend little time preparing a strategic plan and communicating between the strategy and executive layers. They spend most of their focus and time on securing capital and communicating with investors, which makes them to overlook important issues such as communication with the target market, customer satisfaction and trust, cost adjustment and development of income channels and formulation of the related strategies.. This research has been carried out with the aim of systematically reviewing previous researches in the field of strategy mapping and knowledge, as well as identifying key elements and providing a strategic map for new businesses in Bushehr province. The main goal of the research is to design a structural strategic model of effective indicators for starting small and start-up businesses. By studying the subject literature and using the textual content analysis approach, a set of fifteen basic indicators were identified, and in order to localize them in small and start-up businesses, the Delphi technique was used in three rounds. The statistical population of the research included managers and experts familiar with the subject and working in the field of small and start-up businesses. A researcher-made questionnaire was used to collect data, and its validity and reliability were also confirmed. In order to design a structural strategic model of effective indicators for the planning of small and start-up businesses, the interpretive structural modeling approach was used in a fuzzy environment to manage linguistic ambiguities in judgments. The results of the modeling and MICMAC analysis showed that the attraction and cultivation of expert employees, employee participation, effective leadership and the creation of a supporting information system are among the basic and influential indicators in the field of small and start-up businesses; Therefore, managers are suggested to emphasize and pay more attention to this group of indicators.