Article Analysis

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Article Analysis: Research and find a scholarly article that was published within the last five years (the research conducted must be quantitative, the reliability and validity must be documented within the article, the article must contain the words “Strategy” or “Strategic” in the title, and the article must have a global context). Attach a copy of the article with your analysis (see the requirements listed below). Note: Articles posted in the Course Documents Tab cannot be used for this assignment. Specifically your analysis should include the following:

1. Synopsis of the purpose of the study or argument presented in the paper

2. An explanation of the primary hypotheses/propositions/research questions posed in the paper

3. The methods used in the paper

4. Key findings/conclusions

5. Your assessment of strengths/weaknesses of the study or arguments

6. Complete reference of the article

Your submitted Work for reference: (Thank You)
Li, F., Liu, L., & Xi, B. (2014). Evaluating strategic leadership based on the method of fuzzy analytic network process. Appl. Math, 8(3), 1461-1466.
The article by Li, Liu and Xi (2014) is mainly based on the application of Fuzzy Analytic Network Process (ANP-Fuzzy) in the evaluation of strategic leadership due to the complexities of its indexes their inter-relationship and fuzziness. They had three main aims;
1. Construction of indexes system of strategic leadership with organizational and personal abilities
2. The interpretation of ANP-Fuzzy fitness for strategic leadership and the ANP structure’s implication steps
3. Designing of strategic leadership’s ANP structure with calculation of priorities, empirical analysis of candidates’ strategic leadership to promote fuzzy evaluation
According to the authors, strategic leadership is highly significant in organizations where it deals with retaining and variations of competitive advantage. The effectiveness of strategic leadership would enable an organization have an improvement in performance and in the enhancement of competitive power in environments that are turbulent. Therefore, the authors embarked on looking at the rich body of literature based on the concept of strategic leadership. Using such literature, they make a discussion of that concept while constructing the indexes system. Afterwards, they give a description of the method of fuzzy analytic network process (ANP-Fuzzy), give a presentation of the procedure of empirical analysis and make a conclusion by discussing the evaluation of strategic leadership using ANP-Fuzzy.
According to Li, Liu and Xi (2014), an organization’s top leadership should establish a strategy through proper analysis of both the exterior and interior environments that the organization is in, make an implementation of the most appropriate strategy at the best possible time, make an evaluation and act according to the behavior that is appropriate for that current environment. Therefore, for top leaders, the most basic responsibility is based on the organization’s existence and maintaining competitive advantage. Using this background information, the authors brought forward five indexes of organizational abilities. Strategic focusing ensures that an organization is oriented strategically for daily work to have a link to the visions of the leader, thus an assurance of strategy objective. By turning strategy into operational terms, the leaders are able to identify projects towards the strategy. By using relevant research, the authors designed an evaluation index system which was presented in a table based on personal abilities and organizational abilities.
The article uses the method of ANP-Fuzzy. It is synthetic method to the substitute selection and problem justification where the Fuzzy set theory and the concept of analytic network process (ANP) are used. The authors use this method because it is a multi-criteria decision technique which is suitable in solving complex problems of decision making. Li, Liu and Xi (2014) first begin by looking at the fitness of ANP-Fuzzy for the evaluation of strategic leadership. The authors note that due to multi-dimensions, evaluation indexes system of strategic leadership has complexities in the system of decisions. This is due to the variety of indicators and their inter-relationships. Since the system is complex the ANP method is appropriate as it will also give the decision-maker have confidence in making interval judgments. Using four implication steps, the authors make an evaluation of strategic leadership using ANP-Fuzzy: ANP structure, priority vectors and pairwise comparisons, super matrix transformation and formation and fuzzy evaluation.
For an empirical analysis, Li, Liu and Xi (2014) use ANP-Fuzzy to evaluate the strategic leadership of three candidates. First, they used priorities by constructing an ANP structure of strategic leadership on the basis of the index system in Super Decisions. They then chose the leaders related and their significant followers in measuring the elements of strategic leadership of the candidates for promotion. This was documented in a table under the mean of fuzzy numbers, linguistic values and frequency of measurement for the three candidates. An evaluation matrix was then constructed according to the measurement frequency. Through this evaluation, they found that the method of ANP can obtain the strategic leadership outcome and also the organizational abilities and personal abilities of meanwhile aspects are shown for the provision of important decision support.
In conclusion, the authors of the article make a construction of the indexes system which contains organizational abilities and personal abilities. By using the ANP-Fuzzy method, they evaluate strategic leadership by calculating the priorities of ANP elements and making computations of strategic leadership evaluation outcomes by the theory of fuzzy. Their results show the feasibility of the ANP method.
In my opinion, the main strength of the article is based on the analysis of the fitness of the ANP method before it is used in evaluation. This assures the audience of its feasibility. However, the authors failed to mention the limitations that the method has in evaluating strategic leadership. This may pose a problem for organizations that lack the same priorities that they had.
References
Li, F., Liu, L., & Xi, B. (2014). Evaluating strategic leadership based on the method of fuzzy analytic network process. Appl. Math, 8(3), 1461-1466.