This study develops and validates an innovative framework combining strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis, fault tree analysis and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) to enhance strategic decision-making, risk management and organizational assessment across industries. The framework aims to improve the quality of project outcomes by systematically identifying vulnerabilities and critical risks.
A systematic literature review identified gaps in existing methodologies. The framework was empirically validated through expert analysis and a case study involving a marine construction company. This process assessed internal and external factors, identified failure modes and uncovered systemic vulnerabilities, demonstrating practical applicability.
At a general level, the integrated sequence improves traceability from strategic posture to risk control actions, strengthens causal coherence in defining failure modes and stabilizes prioritization; in the validation case, it identified the organization as in the stability stage with a recommended defensive strategy set and achieved a 65% reduction in aggregate risk priority number, enabling evidence-based reprioritization and targeted mitigations.
Validation is limited to a single sector, multi-industry longitudinal studies are needed to test generalizability and performance sustainability. Incorporating advanced decision analysis techniques could further refine the framework.
Managers can apply the framework, through a seven step process to: (1) quantify internal and external factors with internal factor evaluation/external factor evaluation (EFE) scores and translate them into concrete strategy sets, (2) reveal root causes and interdependencies by applying FTA to prioritized weaknesses and threats and (3) reduce risk by identifying and mitigating high risk failure modes using FMEA.
This research introduces a novel, scientifically grounded integration of strategic and risk assessment tools, advancing decision-making beyond traditional, intuitive approaches to enhance quality in complex project environments.
