Investigation of the effect of working capital management on profitability by panel data analysis and multi-criteria decision making techniques

Purpose: The aim of this study is to reveal and compare the effect of working capital management on return on assets with different analysis methods, based on the annual financial statement data of companies in the tourism sector traded in Borsa Istanbul (BIST) in the period 2012-2020. This study aimed to reveal the drawbacks of including in the model variables that are not an element of working capital management. Methodology: Panel data analysis, the analytical hierarchy process and the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process were used to reveal the effect of working capital management variables on return on assets based on the financial statement data of the companies. Results: As a result of the analysis, a significant relationship was identified between the rankings made by using the realized return on assets ratios and the rankings obtained by AHP and FAHP, while no significant relationship was found between the rankings obtained by panel data analysis. Conclusion: Including some variables in the model as a working capital management variable in panel data analysis may cause misinterpretation of the effects of real working capital variables on return on assets. When the model that emerged according to the AHP and FAHP methods was examined, the asset turnover rate and financial leverage ratio variables were determined as the ratios with the lowest effect on return on assets, as the elements of working capital management in the weighting made according to the opinions of the experts.