Developing a Model to Recognize, Classify, and Analyz the Uncertainties Affecting the Selection of Strategic Partners in Resilient Economy (Case Study: National Iranian Oil Company)

Different and conflicting perspectives on the development of the country including the implementation of the resilient economy, relations with the West, securing the interests of the West, or ending the ties with the West, establishing relations with Arab countries and strengthening or ending the relations with neighboring countries, sanctions, uncertainties in the global prices of oil products, currency rate fluctuations, inflation rates, and etc. have hindered a coherent and strategic decision. It has led to numerous uncertainties in the selection of international strategic partner(s) in the oil industry. Therefore, the present research aims to provide a comprehensive framework to help identify and analyze the uncertainties affecting the selection of strategic partners in the context of the resilient economy in the National Iranian Oil Company.

In this study, the most important uncertainties of oil projects were identified using thematic analysis technique and interviews with 15 experts. They were then classified according to the context of resilient economy. Finally, factor analysis was used to confirm the proposed classification.

The most important uncertainties of oil projects in the context of resilient economy belonged to the three general categories of uncertainty about the work environment (inflation, environmental safety and health standards, differences in political views and opinions, geological complexities and the number of wells which are need to be drilled, as well as frequent changes in macro-laws and policies), uncertainty about the guiding values (currency rate, global oil price, international issues and sanctions, changing market conditions and customer needs, as well as the lack of access to foreign equipment and machinery), and uncertainty about the options of the related project (insufficient technology or equipment, lack of interaction between the partners, bargaining power of the partners due to the exclusiveness of the technical knowledge, lack of operational experience among the partners, lack of timely completion of the facilities according to the project schedule so that the delay in commissioning of the facility will strongly affect the project economy).

After developing the model based on thematic analysis technique, LISREL output showed that the proposed model can provide an acceptable fit because the calculated chi-square value is equal to 1058.77, the ratio of chi-square to degree of freedom is lower than 3 (2.63 in this study), and the average squares of estimation errors is lower than 0.08 (0.012 in this study).