Financial performance research with multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods, is a common subject of study not only for researchers in the finance literature but also in the applied sciences. Financial performance manifests itself in an internal universe that a firm can directly control, while the share return of the same firm is shaped synchronically in an external universe that cannot be controlled directly. On the other hand, preferring the most suitable MCDM and weighting method to use in measuring financial performance is often regarded as a source of uncertainty. In this study, the share price is used as an external proxy and a tool for comparing MCDM methods, completely different from the previously proposed approaches based on the superiority of internal features. This study was conducted on 131 manufacturing companies in Borsa Istanbul, covering entire 20-quarter period between 2014 and 2018. The experimental findings of the study provide valid solutions for the MCDM and weighting selection problem, that can be proposed as a practical and indirect solution. The results show that preference ranking organization method for enrichment of evaluations (PROMETHEE) method used with hybrid weighting technique produced by far the best performance rankings in 19 out of 20 quarterly periods when compared to the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and weighted sum approach (WSA).
A major difficulty in comparing and even choosing MCDM methods is the uncertainty of information about the consistent and unique characteristics of the results produced. The objective information content of the final scores produced by MCDM methods and their relevance to real life can give us an important idea about them. In this study, first of all, seven MCDM methods with different methodologies were applied to evaluate companies’ financial performance. Then, the obtained MCDM scores were compared using two different objective verification mechanisms. The first validation criterion is the relationship of a MCDM method to real-life rankings (share price). The second criterion is the standard deviation (SD) technique used to discover the objective information content of MCDM final scores. According to the results of this study, PROMETHEE and FUCA definitely outperform other methods in terms of both SD values and strength of correlation with reference real-life rankings. Also, FUCA is methodologically simpler than other methods. However, it produced nearly identical results as the sophisticated PROMETHEE method.
MCDM is a sort of ranking and selection methodology widely used both in daily life and in disciplines such as social, science, health, informatics, and engineering. However, the selection of an appropriate MCDM method is a common and chronic problem of these disciplines. Because the issue of determining the most appropriate method among MCDM methods has not been clarified yet. Since the algorithms of more than a hundred MCDM methods currently that are in use are different, the ranking they produce or the "best alternative" often varies. Although all these methods claim to suggest the best alternative, it is unclear which method should be chosen for the decision maker. In fact, it can be said that input capabilities are focused more in the selection of MCDM methods. On the other hand, besides the potential capabilities of MCDM methods, the results they produce are also important in comparison. In this direction, MCDM-based financial performance measurement of companies was made in this study. The performance of WSA and FUCA methods was evaluated according to Spearman rho and entropy values. Accordingly, the method with the highest capacity is clearly FUCA, because this method showed a clearly higher performance in 10 of 12 problems/terms according to both criteria.
When it comes to choosing the best option among multiple alternatives with criteria of different importance, it makes sense to use multi criteria decision making (MCDM) methods with more than 200 variations. However, because the algorithms of MCDM methods are different, they do not always produce the same best option or the same hierarchical ranking. At this point, it is important how and according to which MCDM methods will be compared, and the lack of an objective evaluation framework still continues. The mathematical robustness of the computational procedures, which are the inputs of MCDM methods, is of course important. But their output dimensions, such as their capacity to generate well-established real-life relationships and rank reversal (RR) performance, must also be taken into account. In this study, we propose for the first time two criteria that confirm each other. For this purpose, the financial performance (FP) of 140 listed manufacturing companies was calculated using nine different MCDM methods integrated with step-wise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA). İn the next stage, the statistical relationship between the MCDM-based FP final results and the simultaneous stock returns of the same companies in the stock market was compared. Finally, for the first time, the RR performance of MCDM methods was revealed with a statistical procedure proposed in this study. According to the findings obtained entirely through data analytics, Faire Un Choix Adéquat (FUCA) and (which is a fairly new method) the compromise ranking of alternatives from distance to ideal solution (CRADIS) were determined as the most appropriate methods by the joint agreement of both criteria.
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