IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ejores/v221y2012i2p417-423.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring the relative balance of DMUs

Author

Listed:
  • Ahn, Heinz
  • Neumann, Ludmila
  • Vazquez Novoa, Nadia

Abstract

In basic Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models, the weights of performance criteria are endogenously determined, assigning to each decision-making unit (DMU) its best possible efficiency score. This property is widely considered to be a major strength of the method, but it is also a source of considerable problems concerning performance assessment and performance control. Such problems result from the possibility of zero-value weights that exclude criteria from the evaluation. Unlike approaches that deal with this issue by incorporating value judgments into the analysis, we suggest a complementary balance score that is derived from the given data set. This score evaluates the extent to which a DMU avoids concentration on only some of the crucial performance criteria. One of the possible decisions resulting from a balance analysis is to reduce the set of DMUs considered to serve as benchmarks. For this case, a modified CCR–O model is presented.

Suggested Citation

  • Ahn, Heinz & Neumann, Ludmila & Vazquez Novoa, Nadia, 2012. "Measuring the relative balance of DMUs," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 221(2), pages 417-423.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:221:y:2012:i:2:p:417-423
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2012.03.030
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221712002391
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ejor.2012.03.030?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sarrico, C. S. & Dyson, R. G., 2004. "Restricting virtual weights in data envelopment analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 159(1), pages 17-34, November.
    2. Maria Portela & Emmanuel Thanassoulis, 2006. "Zero weights and non-zero slacks: Different solutions to the same problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 145(1), pages 129-147, July.
    3. Khalili, M. & Camanho, A.S. & Portela, M.C.A.S. & Alirezaee, M.R., 2010. "The measurement of relative efficiency using data envelopment analysis with assurance regions that link inputs and outputs," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 203(3), pages 761-770, June.
    4. R. Allen & A. Athanassopoulos & R.G. Dyson & E. Thanassoulis, 1997. "Weights restrictions and value judgements in Data Envelopment Analysis: Evolution, development and future directions," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 73(0), pages 13-34, October.
    5. Cooper, W.W. & Ruiz, José L. & Sirvent, Inmaculada, 2009. "Selecting non-zero weights to evaluate effectiveness of basketball players with DEA," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 195(2), pages 563-574, June.
    6. Ramón, Nuria & Ruiz, José L. & Sirvent, Inmaculada, 2010. "A multiplier bound approach to assess relative efficiency in DEA without slacks," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 203(1), pages 261-269, May.
    7. D L Tracy & B Chen, 2005. "A generalized model for weight restrictions in data envelopment analysis," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 56(4), pages 390-396, April.
    8. Cook, Wade D. & Seiford, Larry M., 2009. "Data envelopment analysis (DEA) - Thirty years on," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 192(1), pages 1-17, January.
    9. Dyson, R. G. & Allen, R. & Camanho, A. S. & Podinovski, V. V. & Sarrico, C. S. & Shale, E. A., 2001. "Pitfalls and protocols in DEA," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 132(2), pages 245-259, July.
    10. Estellita Lins, M.P. & Moreira da Silva, A.C. & Lovell, C.A.K., 2007. "Avoiding infeasibility in DEA models with weight restrictions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 181(2), pages 956-966, September.
    11. Francisco Pedraja-Chaparro & Javier Salinas-Jimenez & Peter Smith, 1997. "On the Role of Weight Restrictions in Data Envelopment Analysis," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 215-230, May.
    12. E. Thanassoulis & R. Allen, 1998. "Simulating Weights Restrictions in Data Envelopment Analysis by Means of Unobserved DMUs," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(4), pages 586-594, April.
    13. Dimitrov, Stanko & Sutton, Warren, 2010. "Promoting symmetric weight selection in data envelopment analysis: A penalty function approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 200(1), pages 281-288, January.
    14. Allen, R. & Thanassoulis, E., 2004. "Improving envelopment in data envelopment analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 154(2), pages 363-379, April.
    15. Hinojosa, M.A. & Mármol, A.M., 2011. "Axial solutions for multiple objective linear problems. An application to target setting in DEA models with preferences," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 159-167, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Afsharian, Mohsen & Ahn, Heinz & Thanassoulis, Emmanuel, 2017. "A DEA-based incentives system for centrally managed multi-unit organisations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 259(2), pages 587-598.
    2. Lampe, Hannes W. & Hilgers, Dennis, 2015. "Trajectories of efficiency measurement: A bibliometric analysis of DEA and SFA," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 240(1), pages 1-21.
    3. Fang, Lei, 2013. "A generalized DEA model for centralized resource allocation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 228(2), pages 405-412.
    4. Ahn, Heinz & Vazquez Novoa, Nadia, 2016. "The decoy effect in relative performance evaluation and the debiasing role of DEA," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 249(3), pages 959-967.
    5. Costa, Marcelo Azevedo & Lopes-Ahn, Ana Lúcia & Kilger, Alexander de Carvalho & Micas, Artur Fontenelle, 2023. "Limitations of weight restrictions in data envelopment analysis for benchmarking Brazilian electricity distribution system operators," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    6. Afsharian, Mohsen & Ahn, Heinz & Harms, Sören Guntram, 2021. "A review of DEA approaches applying a common set of weights: The perspective of centralized management," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 294(1), pages 3-15.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ströhl, Florian & Borsch, Erik & Souren, Rainer, 2018. "Integration von Gewichtsrestriktionen in das DEA-Modell nach Charnes, Cooper und Rhodes: Exemplarische Optionen und Auswirkungen," Ilmenauer Schriften zur Betriebswirtschaftslehre, Technische Universität Ilmenau, Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre, volume 3, number 32018.
    2. Victor Podinovski & Emmanuel Thanassoulis, 2007. "Improving discrimination in data envelopment analysis: some practical suggestions," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 117-126, October.
    3. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2015. "Efficiency of the banking system in Vietnam under financial liberalization," OSF Preprints qsf6d, Center for Open Science.
    4. Martin Bod’a & Martin Dlouhý & Emília Zimková, 2018. "Unobservable or omitted production variables in data envelopment analysis through unit-specific production trade-offs," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 26(4), pages 813-846, December.
    5. Panagiotis Ravanos & Giannis Karagiannis, 2022. "On VEA, Production Trade-offs and Weight Restrictions," Discussion Paper Series 2022_04, Department of Economics, University of Macedonia, revised Jun 2022.
    6. Alejandro Nin‐Pratt & Bingxin Yu, 2010. "Getting implicit shadow prices right for the estimation of the Malmquist index: the case of agricultural total factor productivity in developing countries," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 41(3‐4), pages 349-360, May.
    7. Krivonozhko, Vladimir E. & Førsund, Finn R. & Lychev, Andrey V., 2012. "Identifying Suspicious Efficient Units in DEA Models," Memorandum 30/2012, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    8. Thanassoulis, Emmanuel & Kortelainen, Mika & Allen, Rachel, 2012. "Improving envelopment in Data Envelopment Analysis under variable returns to scale," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 218(1), pages 175-185.
    9. Pereira, Miguel Alves & Camanho, Ana Santos & Figueira, José Rui & Marques, Rui Cunha, 2021. "Incorporating preference information in a range directional composite indicator: The case of Portuguese public hospitals," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 294(2), pages 633-650.
    10. Rezaeiani, M.J. & Foroughi, A.A., 2018. "Ranking efficient decision making units in data envelopment analysis based on reference frontier share," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 264(2), pages 665-674.
    11. Dimitrov, Stanko & Sutton, Warren, 2010. "Promoting symmetric weight selection in data envelopment analysis: A penalty function approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 200(1), pages 281-288, January.
    12. Kalinichenko, Olena & Amado, Carla A.F. & Santos, Sérgio P., 2022. "Exploring the potential of Data Envelopment Analysis for enhancing pay-for-performance programme design in primary health care," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 298(3), pages 1084-1100.
    13. Pereira de Souza, Marcus Vinicius & Souza, Reinaldo C. & Pessanha, José Francisco M. & da Costa Oliveira, Carlos Henrique & Diallo, Madiagne, 2014. "An application of data envelopment analysis to evaluate the efficiency level of the operational cost of Brazilian electricity distribution utilities," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 169-174.
    14. Victor V. Podinovski & Wan Rohaida Wan Husain, 2017. "The hybrid returns-to-scale model and its extension by production trade-offs: an application to the efficiency assessment of public universities in Malaysia," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 250(1), pages 65-84, March.
    15. Sourour Ramzi & Mohamed Ayadi, 2016. "Assessment of Universities Efficiency Using Data Envelopment Analysis: Weights Restrictions and Super-Efficiency Measure," Journal of Applied Management and Investments, Department of Business Administration and Corporate Security, International Humanitarian University, vol. 5(1), pages 40-58, February.
    16. Hosein Arman & Abdollah Hadi‐Vencheh, 2021. "Restricting the relative weights in data envelopment analysis," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(3), pages 4127-4136, July.
    17. M. Soleimani-damaneh & M. Zarepisheh, 2009. "Linear transformations to decrease computational requirements of solving some known linear programming models," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 172(1), pages 37-43, November.
    18. D L Tracy & B Chen, 2005. "A generalized model for weight restrictions in data envelopment analysis," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 56(4), pages 390-396, April.
    19. Korhonen, Pekka & Tainio, Risto & Wallenius, Jyrki, 2001. "Value efficiency analysis of academic research," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 121-132, April.
    20. Tavana, Madjid & Ebrahimnejad, Ali & Santos-Arteaga, Francisco J. & Mansourzadeh, Seyed Mehdi & Matin, Reza Kazemi, 2018. "A hybrid DEA-MOLP model for public school assessment and closure decision in the City of Philadelphia," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 70-89.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:221:y:2012:i:2:p:417-423. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.