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The use of national and international rankings of universities is increasing rapidly. Dill and Soo (2005), who take a generally positive view of university league tables, review the performance of some leading examples of the genre. They conclude that “Our review of the five leading commercial university league tables from Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US suggests that the definitions of academic quality used in these tables are converging…It would be valuable to extend the analysis to league tables developed in Europe, Asia, and Latin America to see the extent to which a common construct of academic quality is becoming truly international” (Dill & Soo, 2005, pp. 525–526).

The objectives of this paper are to estimate the annual Malmquist TFP(total factor productivity) index of Korea and China’s road freight transport with DEA(data envelope analysis) and to decompose the index into technical efficiency change and technology change. In the process of the estimation, we used labor, capital, and fuel as input factors and ton-km of road freight transport as output factor. The panel data of Korea and China’s road freight transport industry from 1985 to 2004 are used. The results of the analysis show several points. First, there was no significant improvement in China’s TFP growth before 1997, but there was continuous growth in TFP since 1997 because of constantly increasing domestic freight transport demand. Second, there was downward trend in Korea’s TFP, especially there was a large reduction of productivity in 1998 because of the huge reduction of road freight transport demand during the period of the economic crisis. Third, the technology improvements play a significant role in the TFP growth and the technical efficiency had negative effects on the TFP growth of Korea. However, the technology improvements as well as the technical efficiency had positive effects on the TFP growth of China’s road freight transport industry.

This study aims to analyze the efficiency of banks under board gender diversity and to examine the determinants of bank efficiency.

Data for analysis were sourced from annual reports of 21 banks for the period from 2009 to 2017. A two-step framework was used: first, an examination of efficiency scores with and without board gender diversity computed using data envelopment analysis; and second, a regression of board gender diversity as a determinant of bank efficiency using panel estimation on an unbalanced panel data.

The results reveal that gender diversity promotes bank efficiency up to a maximum of two female directors on a nine-member board of directors, suggesting a threshold effect on bank efficiency. Board size improves bank efficiency. Board independence is negatively related to bank efficiency. Also, powerful chief executive officers are detrimental for bank efficiency. Finally, the authors find that ownership structure, bank size, bank age and loan-to-deposit ratio are important factors affecting bank efficiency.

All bank-year observations with no female representation on the board were excluded. As such, this paper is limited to 21 banks. Future research should look at a larger data set and account for dynamic endogeneity.

The paper contributes to bank governance structure, namely, gender composition of boards, and provides an insight for regulators and shareholders to estimate the role of men and women on boards.

The novel feature of the efficiency model used is that it incorporates board gender diversity as an additional input variable, in line with the preposition of proponent of resource dependency theory.

This study aims to design a national innovation capability appraisal model. This would indicate Iran’s competitiveness situation among regional countries and suggest factors influencing Iran’s performance promotion.

The methodology included four sections: bibliometric analysis to discover intellectual evolution of innovation capability and related concepts; construction of a multi-division structure of national innovation capability according to the clusters extracted from bibliometric results, and experts’ opinions; creating dynamic network data envelope analysis (DEA) according to designed structure, and analysis of Iran’s performance among regional countries; identification and prioritization of the factors extracted from experts’ opinions that improve Iran’s performance in created network using Fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory method.

The contemporary bibliometric analysis by its extracted clusters proved the necessity of a multi-division for measuring national innovation capability performance that each division and indicators of each step were designed according to clusters concepts. In designed structure, dynamic network DEA results revealed the weakness of Iran’s performance in the third division in the transformation of patents and high-tech imports to high-tech and creative exports, which led to proposing improving factors by getting experts’ opinions to enhance Iran’s performance in this division by prioritizing them.

One of the limitations of this research was that the indicators used in three phases of national innovation capability in DEA were extracted only from the World Intellectual Property Organization database. Another limitation was the number of experts in focus group sessions because due to the difficulty of gathering them in one session, the researchers lost the participation of some of these recognized experts. Also, the research concentration was on the improvement of the third phase of national innovation capability, in which Iran’s performance was weak.

Creating a relationship between the divisions of dynamic network DEA, as a national innovation capability appraisal model, and the concepts of clusters extracted from reviewing the intellectual structure and evolution of innovation capability and related concepts.

The motivation for this paper stems from the 2001 financial crisis which emerged in the banking industry and spread over the other industries, creating a domino effect. The purpose of this paper is to examine the market efficiency of Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) listed non-financial firms from 2000 through 2002.

A four-stage data envelope analysis (DEA) is developed to measure the performance of firms before and after the 2001 financial crisis. At each stage, production, profitability, marketability and overall efficiencies are measured. Further, Malmquist Productivity Index is applied to compare total factor productivity over time.

The findings show that firms are more efficient at the profitability stage than at other stages. However, the 2001 financial crisis eroded profitability efficiency. Overall, ISE-listed firms experienced diseconomies of scale so that many firms were not able to transform production into sales and therefore earnings efficiently, particularly during the crisis period.

The sample is limited to manufacturing companies. All financial firms are excluded from the sample.

This paper extends the three-stage market value efficiency process outlined in Zhu (2000) by adding production stage. It proposes four-stage DEA approach to measure production, profitability, marketability and overall efficiency of ISE-listed firms. To the best of authors’ knowledge, there has been no study using four-stage DEA approach for Turkish firms.

Evaluating and optimizing e‐government services is imperative for governments especially due to the capacity of e‐services to transform public administrations and assist the interactions of governments with citizens, businesses and other government agencies. Existing widely applied evaluation approaches neglect to incorporate citizens' satisfaction measures. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to contribute to the understanding of citizen‐centric e‐government evaluation and unify existing key performance indicators (KPIs); and to propose a reference process model of a novel evaluation approach that uses the unified KPIs to facilitate the creation of a “know‐how” repository.

The authors adopt a quantitative research approach for the evaluation of e‐government services that is based on data envelope analysis (DEA). A survey was conducted for the empirical investigation and data were collected from 13 e‐government services in Turkey. Based on the empirical application of the e‐government evaluation method, a reference process model is designed.

The proposed evaluation method was proved valid and able to provide assessment with richer explanations than traditional statistical measurements. DEA enabled the identification of insufficient e‐government services and the provision of suggested improvements.

The reference process model is constructed based on the experience gained by applying the method to a sole cultural setting;, i.e. e‐government services in Turkey.

The proposed evaluation method, in comparison to other user‐oriented ones, provided assessments with richer explanations than traditional statistical measurements, such as structured equation modelling. The reference process model constructed based on the empirical research is expected to accelerate the citizen‐oriented evaluation of e‐government and promote impact‐oriented indicators.

This is the first application of DEA in the e‐government field, although it has been widely applied for performance measurement in other fields, especially operations research. The novelty of DEA is that the assessment results provide suggestions for strategic improvement of the e‐services.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of the concept of service quality in a supply chain and present a framework for its measurement.

A literature review was conducted on key service quality models and measurement issues. Various dimensions related to the quality of service were explored. This was followed by in‐depth exploratory interviews at different levels. Based on the insights gained, a conceptual framework for measurement of quality of service in supply chain is presented.

The paper presents a conceptual model of service quality in supply chains based on gap analysis. These gaps are bi‐directional. The bi‐directional gaps cover both inter‐ and intra‐organizational transactions in the supply chain. They include the gap between supplier and focal firm, focal firm and distributor, and distributor and customer. Further, implications of various factors such as economic, politico‐legal, technical, socio‐cultural, competition, demographic are also highlighted. A novel methodology for the measurement of these gaps using various tools such as quality loss function, data envelope analysis, etc. is also presented along with segregating indicators in three categories, namely, quality of service indicators, quality of service and performance indicators, and performance indicators.

The assessment of quality of service in the supply chain is an attempt to cover the relatively less explored area. It is expected that this research will further motivate researchers to work in this area. This service quality framework will be beneficial to researchers and practicing managers in identification of opportunities for improvements in service quality.

This paper explores research in the less explored area and offers practical help to researchers and practitioners in providing a direction for service quality improvement in the supply chain.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the knowledge on the efficiency of the incubators in Mexico, from a double-managerial approach (incubator and start-ups) measuring the efficiency oriented to the survival growth in the employment.

The efficiency of 25 business incubators of a university in a Mexico was analyzed from 2012 to 2014. Through the envelope data analysis (DEA) technique, composed of five inputs and three outputs, which help to determine the decision-making units (DMUs) that are in the best practice border, being able to know the factors relevant and how they have been managed in the different incubators.

One of the three years observed was identified as the most efficient, with 13 start-ups at the most efficient border. The projection shows some entries that must be modified to maximize the creation of new incubated business with a focus on survival and growth. The authors propose the resources that must be modified to adopt efficient management practices for incubators and start-ups small size.

This analysis recognizes the size and restriction of resources as a determinant in the efficiency of intermediate technology business incubators. However, an obvious limitation is the non-standardized sample of 25 incubators does not allow generalizing the results.

The special support received by start-ups linked to a university with strong financial and non-financial support.

Dual management (incubator and incubated start-ups) approach to efficiency analysis and the use of the DEA for the incubation topic and to fill a gap persists in the understanding of creation of new business in intermediate technology.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether real estate investment trusts (REITs) have any significant cost-efficiency advantages over real estate operating companies (REOCs).

The data for listed companies were extracted from the Bloomberg terminal. The authors analyzed financial ratios and conducted a non-parametric data envelope analysis (DEA) for 534 firms in the USA, Canada and some EU member states.

The results suggest that REITs were much more cost-efficient than REOCs by all the parameters in the DEA model during the entire three-year period under consideration. Although the debt-to-equity levels were similar, REOCs were more relying on short-term than long-term maturities, which made them more vulnerable against market corrections or shocks. Being larger in asset size did not necessarily guarantee greater economies of scale. Both – the cases of increasing economies of scale and diseconomies – were detected. The time period 2015–2017 showed the general trend of decreasing efficiency.

Very few papers on the topic of REITs have attempted to find out whether a different firm structure displays any differences in efficiency. Because the question of REITs and sustainable growth of the real estate market has become a prominent issue, this research can help EU countries to consider the option of adopting a REIT system. If this system were successfully implemented, the EU member states could benefit from a more sustainable and more rapid growth of their real estate markets.

This study aims to examine logistics infrastructure, trade differences, and environmental and social equity factors, for a set of 89 countries.

Following recent work which uses secondary data sources for supply chain research at the country‐level, data were obtained from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund databases. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to compute country‐level efficiencies and ANOVA was used to do regional comparisons.

The analysis shed light on country‐level dimensions of logistics infrastructure and trade performance. It also provided insights regarding environmental (e.g. CO2 emissions) and social equity (e.g. health expenditure) dimensions for different regions.

Panel data rather than longitudinal data were used to draw the conclusions. A more exhaustive study could consider a multi‐year timeframe. A limited number of dimensions were examined. As the study was exploratory, further work could consider a more extensive number of dimensions.

The study has important implications for policy makers, since the attractiveness of various resource endowments like those considered here (environmental, social, supply chain logistics) can be seen to be associated with trade performance.

This is one of the few studies to explore efficiency differences (enacted through DEA and ANOVA analyses), differentiating the research from the usual country clustering approaches. It also contributes to the understanding of differences between countries from a macro perspective, which provides insights for firms intending to expand their supply chains.