The Classifications of Banks’ Criteria Affecting the Size of Assets Between the Years of 2008-2012 by Hierarchical Clustering and PAM Algorithm.

The banking sector is the most important partner of organizations and countries against developing world economy and fluctuations in global competitive environment. Organizations keen on working together with internationally active banks to keep up with the competitive conditions. Therefore, the scientific techniques become a necessity to assess facilities and sectorial qualifications of chosen banks as partners in global environment. The focus of this study is to determine the similarities (or dissimilarities) of banks in Turkish banking sector by criteria affecting the size of assets within their basic indicators. Banks’ sufficiency in the Turkish banking sector with regard to the criteria of the size of assets is important in terms of preferred these banks by the organizations in Turkey. To classify the banks by these criteria between the years of 2008-2012, Ward linkage technique and Pam algorithm are used as hierarchical and partitioning clustering analysis, respectively. Silhouette index is utilized to choose the convenient cluster number affecting the quality of the clustering results. As the results of Ward technique and PAM algorithm, the comparisons of the differences of the clustering structures and also cluster numbers are given.