Adapting modern strategic decision support tools in the participatory strategy process—a case study of a forest research station

The strategic planning of a forest research organization is based on anticipating the changes in the operational environment of the entire forest cluster and in the organization itself. Scanning operational environment to attain a systematic approach and support for a decision situation can be carried out by applying a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis, for example. In this study, SWOT analyses formed the basis for further operations that were applied in the strategy process of the forest research station. The methods applied in the following phases were scenario analyses based on the external operational environment factors, formulation of strategic factors from the internal operational environment factors, and statistical analyses of the priorities of the strategic factors in the created scenarios. The process and methods applied provided a natural and analytical way for researchers to participate in the strategy process. The operations carried out resulted, for instance, in the identification of factors having high priority in all the scenarios (networking outside the research organization and factors related to international cooperation), and factors that should be given specific emphasis in the event of a probability of a specific scenario being realised. Statistical analyses can also be used to produce information concerning the uncertainties included in the priority calculations of the factors. The approach presented in this study shows how the SWOT analysis can be diversified and utilized in the later phases of the strategy process. Compared to earlier A'WOT applications, the reformulation of the SWOT factors opened new possibilities to use A'WOT-like methods, modern multi-criteria decision-support tools, and statistical analyses in strategy processes, and to utilize the results of the SWOT analysis effectively throughout the process.