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This study aims to examine the effect of supply chain agility (SCA) on operational performance (OP) measurements of steel manufacturing firms. It also investigates the role of cost efficiencies concerning enhance OPs.

The study is based on an experimental research design by collecting data from responses 398 responses of key officials of India’s steel manufacturing firms. Analyses are carried to explore this modern concept with the help of Smart-partial least square (PLS) version 3.3.2 with confirmatory factor analysis and PLS structural equational modelling.

SCA factor (SCAF) directly has influenced the firm’s OP. It also represents cost efficiencies that have partial mediation between the SCAF and OP. The impact of cost efficiencies on OPs is strongly significant as compared to the impact of SCAF on cost efficiencies.

Management teams in the manufacturing industry should stress the role of SCA as a comprehensive concept in responding to market needs in a volatile environment. SCA reflects one of its winning strategies in today’s dynamic and competitive world. Managers must thoroughly know the ramifications of agility to develop a mechanism for determining the procedures and identifying inequality in SC operation.

This study speaks explicitly about the linkage between SCAF, OP, CE. It is an addition to the existing theories of RBV. Enhancements in OP measurements, specifically performance and flexibility, will lead to better firm performance. study conceptualizing the complementing effects of SCA (IS capability) and OPs and second cost efficiencies play positive partial mediating effect in between the link. The achievement of SC agile is especially a critical approach to Boost customer satisfaction and differentiate market position.

The purpose of this paper is to present and test a new model for competitive capabilities. Traditionally, a cumulative model has been viewed as having one sequence of building competitive capabilities in a firm in support of market needs, including quality, delivery, cost efficiency and flexibility. Although appealing as a conceptual model, empirical testing has not been able to fully support the cumulative model. This paper acknowledges the need for a hybrid approach to managing capability progression. It brings together the literature on trade‐offs, cumulative capabilities, and order winners and qualifiers.

A new hybrid approach for modelling competitive capabilities is tested empirically using data from the high performance manufacturing (HPM) study, round 3, including three industries and seven countries – a total of 211 plants.

The hybrid model shows significantly better fit with the data from the sample than the cumulative models suggested by previous literature. Empirical support is found for the traditional perception that a high level of quality is a prerequisite for a high level of delivery performance. However, cost efficiency and flexibility do not exhibit a cumulative pattern. Instead, the results show that they are developed in parallel. The findings suggest that a balance between cost efficiency and flexibility is built upon high levels of quality and delivery performance.

Since we limit the empirical investigation to three industries and seven countries, it would be interesting to extend the testing of this model to more industries and countries. This research shows that combining perspectives and insights from different research streams – in this case, trade‐off theory and the concepts of cumulative capabilities, and order winners and qualifiers – can be fruitful.

The results of this paper provides managers with guidelines concerning the configuration of competitive capabilities. First, a qualifying level of quality needs to be attained, followed by a qualifying level of delivery. Then, a balance between potential order winners, i.e. cost efficiency and flexibility, needs to be attained.

This paper presents a new approach to modelling competitive capabilities that synthesises previous research streams and perspectives from cumulative capabilities, contesting capabilities (trade‐offs), and order winners and qualifiers.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency of insurance companies in Ghana using a two‐stage procedure to ascertain whether insurance companies are cost efficient and also to examine the efficiency determinants of insurance companies.

Using a cross‐sectional data set of 30 firms over the period 2006‐2008, the study evaluates the efficiency scores by applying a data envelopment analysis that allows the inclusion of multiple inputs and outputs in the production frontier. The study also employs a regression model to identify the key determinants of efficiency of the Ghanaian insurance industry.

The empirical results in the first stage suggest higher average efficiency scores for life insurance business than non‐life insurance companies. In the second stage, the authors observe that the drive for market share, firm size and the ratio of equity to total invested assets are important determinants of an insurance firm's efficiency.

The findings of this study provide insights into the cost efficiency of insurance companies in Ghana. This has implications for the efficient management of insurance firms in the country.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify agricultural services into five categories, including agricultural materials supply service, financial service, technical service, machinery service and processing and sales service, and to examine the effect of agricultural services on cost saving of rice production in China.

Based on a three-year panel data set covering 3,421 rice farmers in 12 Chinese provinces collected from the state rice industry experiment stations’ fixed watch points of China Agriculture Research System, a stochastic frontier model which takes the price vectors of input variables into cost function is developed by stochastic frontier analysis method in the study.

There is a deviation between the actual cost and the minimum cost on rice production in China due to the loss of cost efficiency, whose score is 0.7983 at the mean. Agricultural services can help improve cost efficiency, thus contributing to cost saving. Specifically, the effect of technical service on cost saving is the highest, followed by processing and sales service, machinery service, financial service and agricultural materials supply service.

The results of this paper are of great significance to the effectiveness and efficiency of the targeted agricultural services and indicate implications for policy improvement under the context of clear upward trend of agricultural production costs.

This paper aims to examine alternative methods for treating nonperforming loans (NPLs) in bank cost-efficiency studies using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA).

The authors consider three methods of treating NPLs in SFA: as an additional control variable, as an environmental factor or as a deduction from total loans. Using data from the Vietnamese banking system (2003-2010), the authors then compare these results with those of the base model (where total loans is used regardless of the NPLs) to see which one is more appropriate for this study.

The authors observed that the first two methods are inappropriate for the analysis: one cannot find the significant relationship between NPLs and the banks’ total cost, and the other cannot account for any inefficiency at all. The authors suggested that the third method of separating NPLs from total loans can provide better insights. Using the proposed method, the authors showed that the cost-efficiency of Vietnamese banks over the period examined was moderate with a slight decreasing trend. When NPLs are separated, the cost-efficiency decreases in state-owned banks and big banks, whereas it increases in small and private banks.

Research is limited to Vietnamese banks during a certain period, and it would be useful to apply the same technique to other data sets.

The paper suggests a new approach to account for NPLs in cost SFA studies in banking.

The paper provides a much more searching analysis of NPLs in banking than has generally been seen in previous research.

This paper evaluates the importance of both liquidity and solvency risk factors on variations in efficiency measures of US commercial and domestic banks from 2005 to 2017.

The analysis is conducted using the true random effect stochastic cost model to examine the role of both liquidity and solvency risk factors. To this end, the author uses the exponential stochastic cost function and adds new variables, including bank size, crisis as an indicator of the financial crisis and the Dodd–Frank Act and Basel II Accord as regulatory dummies.

The results show that both liquidity and solvency risk factors positively affect the variance of cost inefficiency measures and thus have negative impact on the cost efficiency measures. In addition, banks increased the cost of financial intermediation during the financial crisis, whereas regulatory factors of Basel II Accord and Dodd–Frank Act play a crucial role in explaining the cost efficiency measures.

These results are the first to quantify the impact of both liquidity and solvency on the variations in cost efficiency measures.

The agribusiness co-operative sector in Canada has been affected by ongoing changes in economic, political, and social policies. Increased competition from local investor-owned firms and multinational companies, deregulation and globalization of trade and increased concentration of suppliers and purchasers have put tremendous competitive pressure on agribusiness marketing co-operatives. The enhanced level of competitive rivalry may force co-operatives into lowering costs and prices. Improvement in cost or operating efficiency of agribusiness marketing co-operatives may be crucial as changes in regulation, technology, and other market developments bring into question the long-term viability of co-operative businesses. Therefore, information as to the efficiency with which agribusiness co-operative firms operate would be useful.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. The first and the most important is to examine the efficiency of Islamic banks relative to conventional banks operating in North African Arab countries, in terms of cost and revenue efficiency. The second objective is to assess more evidence regarding the banking system efficiency trend and dynamics in each single country, and to compare such trends among countries included in the study.

The non‐parametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to estimate cost and revenue efficiency scores assuming variable returns to scale (VRS). The sample consists of nine Islamic banks and 11 conventional banks.

The results indicated that Islamic banks achieved higher average revenue efficiency scores over conventional banks in this region, while the growth rate of revenue efficiency score of Islamic bank was less than conventional banks. In terms of cost efficiency, the results varied from country to another. The results also showed that both groups of banks were close to each other, with an advantage to conventional banks, which suffer less cost efficiency loss over time compared to Islamic banks.

The very limited data sources (banks' web sites) was was the main limitation faced during preparing for this research. Another limitation was the non‐regularity of annual reports.

Islamic banks are highly challenged in finding investment opportunities/avenues that comply with Islamic regulations, unlike conventional banks that can invest in fixed income securities. There is a serious need for some countries to deregulate their banking systems more, in order to enhance the compatibility and the efficiency of their banking, such as the case of Sudan.

Given the previously mentioned difficulties, decent data set were collected. The value of this paper is the use of nonparametric DEA to analyse cost and revenue efficiences in the countries of this region.

The study examines the impact of income diversification on cost efficiency of Vietnamese commercial banks over the period 2005–2017.

Income diversification indicators are designed based on measures of diversifying loan portfolio. Besides the traditional model, we use the Fractional Regression to estimate the model with dependent variables defined on the unit interval.

Through the two-stage DEA analysis, we find that the income diversification has a positive impact on the cost efficiency of banks. In addition, this impact is stronger for unlisted banks and in the phase of banking system ongoing restructuring.

The use of a variety of income diversification measures and estimation methods for models with bounded dependent variable has provided a reliable empirical evidence of the advantages of implementing a strategy on structural diversity of both interest and non-interest income in the emerging banking markets such as Vietnam.

The paper attempts to analyze vertical product differentiation as a strategy pursued by European banks seeking greater market power and higher reputation for quality, and to examine whether this entails losses in banking efficiency.

First, the empirical analysis seeks to demonstrate whether borrowers at banks in Europe are willing to pay a premium to operate with banks that attempt to increase their reputation for quality in the market, i.e. whether banks use quality to vertically differentiate and so soften competition. To test such hypothesis requires us to define an empirical model with variables that describe certain characteristics of banking quality as explanatory variables of the loan interest to the market interest rate margin. This model is estimated by two stage least squares. Second, the paper seeks to test whether the market power derived from vertical product differentiation (quality reputation) prevents banks from operating efficiently. To test this hypothesis first we estimated cost efficiency taking into account bank risk preferences and then we define an empirical model that relates the results on efficiency with the margin of interest loan rate over the market interest rate.

The results show that less competition, deriving from a bank's ability to differentiate its services from those of its rivals through quality, is positive because it helps to provide a more stable banking system. Moreover, the banking market power generated by investing in quality does not prevent banks from operating efficiently from a production point of view.

The findings are consistent with the view that European banks soften competition by being more stable, and this does not prevent cost efficiency. So it seems that the regulatory authorities should improve their solvency measures since borrowers’ preferences are to maintain relationships with non‐fragile banks, and on the other hand banks’ risk preferences seem to be to look for sound borrowers.

Frontier cost efficiency scores that account for bank's risk preference are able to be related with customer preferences based on the model of the industrial organization (10) based on vertical product differentiation in banking.

This is the first paper that relates vertical product differentiation with the results obtained from the literature on x‐efficiency. It is also the first paper that studies the impact of banking market power jointly with cost efficiency in social efficiency when market power comes as result of investing in reputation for banking quality.