Trajectories of efficiency measurement: A bibliometric analysis of DEA and SFA

This study surveys the increasing research field of performance measurement by making use of a bibliometric literature analysis. We concentrate on two approaches, namely Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) as the most important methods to evaluate the efficiency of individual and organizational performance. It is the first literature survey that analyses DEA and SFA publications jointly, covering contributions published in journals, indexed by the Web of Science database from 1978 to 2012. Our aim is to identify seminal papers, playing a major role in DEA and SFA development and to determine areas of adoption. We recognized a constant growth of publications during the years identifying DEA as a standard technique in Operations Research, whereas SFA is mainly adopted in Economic research fields. Making use of document co-citation analysis we identify Airports and Supplier Selection (DEA) as well as Banking and Agriculture (SFA) as most influential application areas. Furthermore, Sensitivity and Fuzzy Set Theory (DEA) as well as Bayesian Analysis and Heterogeneity (SFA) are found to be most influential research areas and seem to be methodological trends. By developing an adoption rate of knowledge we identify that research, in terms of citations, is more focusing on relatively old and recent research at the expenses of middle-aged contributions, which is a typical phenomenon of a fast developing discipline.