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The purpose of this paper is to assess the efficiency of agricultural production in South Africa from 1970 to 2014, using an integrated two-stage fuzzy approach.

Fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution is used to assess the relative efficiency of agriculture in South Africa over the course of the years in the first stage. In the second stage, fuzzy regressions based on different rule-based systems are used to predict the impact of socio-economic and demographic variables on agricultural efficiency. They are compared with the bootstrapped truncated regressions with conditional α levels proposed in Wanke et al. (2016a).

The results show that the fuzzy efficiency estimates ranged from 0.40 to 0.68 implying inefficiency in South African agriculture. The results further reveal that research and development, land quality, health expenditure–population growth ratio have a significant, positive impact on efficiency levels, besides the GINI index. In terms of accuracy, fuzzy regressions outperformed the bootstrapped truncated regressions with conditional α levels proposed in Wanke et al. (2015).

Policies to increase social expenditure especially in terms of health and hence productivity should be prioritized. Also policies aimed at conserving the environment and hence the quality of land is needed.

The paper is original and has not been previously published elsewhere.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the bank efficiency in three developing countries, namely Angola, Brazil and Mozambique, aiming to infer differences given that they belong to the same cultural tradition. The underlying idea is to control for the cultural background, thus allowing the discussion on how different socio-economic and historical variables maybe impacting different levels of banking efficiency and returns to scale results within the ambit of these three countries.

Due to the presence of latent inefficiency, the authors have to modify the technique to accommodate simulation by importance sampling; therefore, in effect, the authors use a local maximum simulated likelihood approach.

The results reveal that Brazil has the highest level of output-oriented efficiency, followed by Angola and then Mozambique. The same ranking is observed in returns to scale, except that vis-à-vis technical change, Brazil and Angola rank first. Finally, inefficiency derived from technical change is highest in Mozambique, followed by Angola and then Brazil. Therefore, these results reveal that the countries with the highest degree of development are higher in efficiency.

Previous studies have identified factors such as legal tradition, accounting conventions, regulatory structures, property rights, culture and religion as possible explanations for cross-border variations in financial development and economic growth. This is the first time banking efficiency is assessed in light of a common cultural background by selecting a group of countries that share the same language and colonial past. Since results are controlled for the same background, it is possible to affirm that the findings are purely related to scale size and economic/political background issues of each country.

The aim of this paper is to provide an approach to analyze the performance of TV programs and to identify what can be done to improve them.

The Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), the Ng-model, Grey relational analysis (GRA), and principal component analysis (PCA) were applied to evaluate the programs, using audience, share, and duration as the performance criteria.

By comparing TOPSIS to the Ng-model, PCA, and GRA, we verified that SVD and bootstrap SVD TOPSIS provide a good balance between equal-weights TOPSIS and the other models. This is because SVD and bootstrap SVD TOPSIS break down the data to a higher degree, but are less impacted by outliers compared to the long tail models.

To determine which TV programs should be replaced or modified is a complex decision that has not been addressed in the literature. The advantage of using a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach is that analysts can choose as many criteria as they want to rank TV programs, rather than relying on a single criterion (e.g., audience, share, target rating point).

This work represents the first time that robust MCDM methodology is applied to an audience data set to analyze the performance of TV programs and to identify what can be done to improve them. This study shows the application of a detailed methodology that is useful for the improvement of TV programs and other entertainment industry content.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the efficiency determinants of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the context of Latin American airlines based on business-related variables commonly found in the literature. The idea is to identify preferable potential airline matches in light of fleet mix, ownership structure and geographical proximity.

In order to achieve the objective, all possible combinations of M&A pairs are considered in the analysis, which is developed in a two-stage approach. First, the M&A Data Envelopment Analysis model efficiency and returns-to-scale estimates are computed. Then, robust regression and multinomial logistic regression are respectively used to discriminate these estimates in terms of such business-related variables.

The results reveal that these different contextual variables significantly impact virtual efficiency and returns-to-scale levels. Private ownership, passenger focus and a better match between aircraft size and demand for flights appear to be key drivers for merged airline efficiency.

The study makes theoretical contributions, though limited to analyzing Latin American airlines only. The use of bootstrapped robust/multinominal logistic regression, compared to the methods adopted by previous literature studies, generates more accurate and robust results related to the efficiency drivers due to its special feature and ability to allow the discrimination of increasing, decreasing, and constant returns to scale in light of a given set of contextual variables.

This study examines the pure effect of the merging activity on efficiency gains. Not only private ownership but also a hybrid public–private ownership has a positive influence on virtual efficiency, suggesting an important governmental role in promoting M&A in the airline industry.

The authors present an original take on the issue of airline mergers by exploring what are the major drivers possibly involved in efficiency gains of potentially merged (virtual) airlines. The authors identify preferable potential airline matches where efficiency gains would be positive in light of business-related variables such as fleet mix, ownership structure and geographical proximity. The analysis also includes an assessment of the impact of contextual variables such as cargo type, ownership structure and geographical proximity in relation to the strategic fit of mergers considering the resulting efficiency and returns-to-scale scores of virtually merged airlines. To the authors’ knowledge, no previous research has addressed these issues in Latin American airlines. Further research directions for this industry are also discussed.

This paper aims to present a citation-based bibliometric review of Islamic banking efficiency literature from 2000 until August 2020 for analyzing the content of the literature and mapping future research directions.

Using bibliometric citation analysis, this study reviews and examines a total of 278 documents from Web of Science (WoS) indexed sources coupled with content analysis.

The results identified that the growth of Islamic banking efficiency literature has begun to rise since 2008 with an annual growth rate of 12.5% while identifying the most influential aspects of Islamic banking efficiency literature in terms of topics, papers, authors and keywords. The outcomes of science mapping (i.e. co-citation network, bibliometric coupling and co-authorship network) reveal that there are three underlying research streams in Islamic banking efficiency literature: growth of Islamic banking efficiency literature, stability and genuineness of Islamic banking operations and the methods in Islamic banking efficiency literature.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first bibliometric review paper on Islamic banking efficiency literature. It successfully unveils the scientific mapping of published WoS documents with a future research agenda also proposed based on the review outcomes. These findings can be used in efficiency-related initiatives by managers or regulators for managing Islamic bank operations worldwide.

This study analyzes whether power in the supply chain, based on governance modes and network centrality, explain financial performance at different levels of analysis: buyers, suppliers and dyads.

The study employs a dual macro-micro lens based on global value chain (i.e. market, modular, relational and captive governance modes) and social network analysis (network centrality) to assess the impact of power (im)balance onto financial performance. Different from previous research, this study adopts information reliability techniques – such as information entropy – to differentiate the weights of distinct financial performance metrics in terms of the maximal entropy principle. This principle states that the probability distribution that best represents the current state of knowledge given prior data is the one with largest entropy. These weights are used in TOPSIS analysis.

Results offer insightful reflections to SCM research. We show that buyers outperform suppliers due to power asymmetry. We ground our findings both analyzing across governance modes and comparing network centrality. We show that market and modular governances (where power balance prevails) outperform relational and captive modes at the dyadic level – thus inferring that in the long run these governance modes may lead to financially healthier supply chains.

This study advances SCM research by exploring the impact of governance modes and network centrality on performance at both firm and dyadic levels while employing an innovative combination of secondary data and robust set of techniques including TOPSIS, WASPAS and information entropy.

This paper investigates the endogenous relationships between banking performance and social welfare in Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries.

A comprehensive three-stage multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach based on alternative informational assumptions is applied.

Results indicate that banking performance is paradoxically associated with stagnant economic activity and higher wealth concentration for the minority. The authors found that SADC banking performance promotes higher Human Development Index (HDI) standards possibly via efficient financial intermediation, dissemination of best managerial practices and other forms of positive spillovers in these countries.

This paper contributes to the MCDM literature by simultaneously exploring the key concepts of “utility functions” (using COPRAS) and “distance to ideal solutions” (using TOPSIS) in mapping and explaining the feedback and cause-effect processes between banking performance and social welfare that may exist. Another distinctive aspect is related to the computation of bias-free criteria weights, using a robust SWARA order-rank based on information entropy. Finally, this paper is concerning the endogeneity measurement, using a novel stochastic structural relationship non-linear programme.

This study focuses on the Critical Success Factors (CSF) for developing sustainable entrepreneurship in the Pakistani telecommunication industry. Despite the efforts made by governments and stakeholders to stimulate sustainable entrepreneurship initiatives, contributions in the telecommunications sector are lacking. Therefore, this study has the major objective of identifying a transformation path for these firms. This is done by providing a theoretical framework for sustainable entrepreneurship in the telecommunications industry, focusing on managerial and operational practices that should be modified according to a set of CSFs identified by experts in Pakistani firms.

This article proposes a novel Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM) approach based on Grey Systems Theory (GST) and Best-Worst Method (BWM) while unveiling endogenous relationships among current managerial/operational practices and the CSFs for sustainable entrepreneurship in the telecommunications industry.

CSFs for achieving sustainable entrepreneurship in the Pakistani telecommunications industry were found to rely on a tripod, based on effectiveness, transparency, and accountability that are embedded within the ambit of managerial and operational practices, such as focusing and reducing digital illiteracy, targeting poor communities, helping the young in structuring start-ups.

This article contributes to the MADM research stream by proposing a novel use of the BWM technique based on GST to promote sustainable entrepreneurship CSFs in Pakistani telecommunications firms.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the performance of Brazilian hospitals’ services and to examine contextual variables in the socioeconomic, demographic and institutional domains as predictors of the performance levels attained.

The paper applied a two-stage approach of the technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) in public hospitals in 92 Rio de Janeiro municipalities, covering the 2008–2013 period. First, TOPSIS is used to estimate the relative performance of hospitals in each municipality. Next, TOPSIS results are combined with neural networks in an effort to originate a performance model with predictive ability. Data refer to hospitals’ outpatient and inpatient services, based on frequent indicators adopted by the healthcare literature.

Despite a slight performance increase over the period, substantial room for improvement is observed. The most important performance predictors were related to the demographic and socioeconomic status (area in square feet and GDP per capita) and to the juridical nature and type of ownership of the healthcare facilities (number of federal and private hospitals).

The results provide managerial insights regarding the performance of public hospitals and opportunities for better resource allocation in the healthcare sector. The paper also considers the impact of external socioeconomic, demographic and institutional factors on hospitals’ performance, indicating the importance of integrative public health policies.

This study displays an innovative context for applying the two-stage TOPSIS technique, with similar efforts not having been identified in the healthcare literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the issue of efficiency in the Brazilian motor carrier industry, which has undergone significant transformations since the economy deregulation in the mid-1990s. The main research objective is to determine whether or not different types of cargoes and geographic regions serviced significantly impact trucking managerial efficiency levels.

Research objectives are accomplished by applying a two-stage data envelopment analysis model with bootstrapped estimates. Based on an unbalanced panel model, secondary data from the annual study published by Transporte Moderno (years 2002-2010) were collected and analyzed.

Results support anecdotal evidence regarding a heterogeneous impact of cargo mix and route mix on efficiency levels.

A major limitation of this work concerns the fact of working with secondary data instead of primary data, especially with respect to the set of inputs and outputs used in the analysis, which may not cover all aspects relevant to building an efficiency frontier. Despite this limitation, the study has made an important contribution in its use of panel data to demonstrate the impacts of different types of cargoes and geographic regions serviced on managerial efficiency levels in the trucking industry.

Managerial impacts in terms of mergers and acquisitions are addressed.

The contribution of this study is twofold. On the theoretical side, a valuable scale for the measurement of managerial efficiency was built and validated, representing an index toward the most productive cargo/route mix. On the other hand, the managerial implication of this possibility of measuring the efficiency levels is that motor carriers can use it as a basis for establishing future action plans.

Brazil, DEA, Longitudinal study, Efficiency drivers, Trucking industry, Unbalanced panel

 Research paper

El estudio investiga el tema de la eficiencia en la industria del transporte Brasileña, la cual ha experimentado cambios significativos desde la desregulación de la economía a mediados de los años noventa. El objetivo principal de la investigación es determinar si los diferentes tipos de cargas y regiones geográficas que han recibido los servicios impactan significativamente o no los niveles de eficiencia administrativa de las empresas de camiones.

Los objetivos de la investigación se lograron usando un modelo DEA de dos etapas con estimaciones bootstrap. Basado en un modelo de panel no balanceado, se obtuvieron y analizaron datos secundarios del estudio anual publicados por Transporte Moderno (años 2002-2010).

Los resultados apoyan la evidencia anécdota en lo relacionado con el impacto heterogéneo de mezcla de cargas y una combinación de rutas en los niveles de eficiencia.

La limitación más grande de este trabajo es el hecho de trabajar con datos secundarios en vez de usar datos primarios, especialmente en relación con el set de inputs y outputs usados en este análisis, que podrían no cubrir todos los aspectos relevantes en la construcción de una frontera eficiente. A pesar de esta limitación, este estudio hace una importante contribución al usar datos de panel para demostrar los impactos de los diferentes tipos de cargas y regiones geográficas atendidas, en los niveles de eficiencia de la administración de la industria de transporte de camiones.

Se discuten los impactos de administración en términos fusiones y adquisiciones.

La contribución de este estudio es doble. Por el lado teórico, una escala relevante para medir la eficiencia de la administración fue construida y validada, que representa un índice hacia la combinación carga/ruta más efectiva. Por otro lado, las implicaciones administrativas de la posibilidad de medir niveles de eficiencia es que las empresas de transportes pueden usarloa como base para establecer planes futuros de acción.

Estudio longitudinal, Industria camionera, Brasil, DEA, Promotores de eficiencia, Panel no balanceado

 Trabajo de investigación

A pesquisa investiga o tema da eficiência na indústria brasileira de transporte rodoviário, a qual tem experimentado mudanças significativas desde a desregulamentação da economia em meados dos anos noventa. O objetivo principal da pesquisa é determinar se os diferentes tipos de cargas e de regiões geográficas atendidas impactam significativamente ou não nos níveis de eficiência na gestão de cargas rodoviárias.

Os objetivos da pesquisa foram atingidos usando um modelo DEA de dois estágios com estimativas bootstrap. Baseados em um modelo de painel, foram recolhidos e analisados dados secundários publicados no estudo anual da publicação Transporte Moderno (anos 2002-2010).

Os resultados apoiam a evidência baseada no senso comum relacionada ao impacto heterogêneo do mix de cargas e do mix de rotas nos níveis de eficiência.

A maior limitação de esta pesquisa concerne ao fato de trabalhar com dados secundários em vez de dados primários, especialmente em relação com a série de inputs e outputs utilizados na análise, que não puderam cobrir todos os aspectos relevantes para definição da fronteira de eficiência. Apesar dessa limitação, esta pesquisa traz uma importante contribuição ao utilizar dados de painel para demonstrar os impactos dos diferentes tipos de cargas e de regiões geográficas atendidas sobre os níveis de eficiência na gestão do transporte de cargas rodoviárias.

Os impactos da gestão em termos de fusão e aquisição são abordados.

A contribuição deste estudo é dupla. Pelo lado teórico, foi construída e validada uma escala relevante para medir a eficiência de gestão de cargas rodoviárias, que indica um índice para a combinação mais efetiva da combinação entre cargas e rotas. Por outro lado, quanto às implicações gerenciais, a possibilidade de medir os níveis de eficiência criam a possibilidade das empresas de transportes utilizá-los como base para futuros planos de ação.

Estudo longitudinal, Setor de transporte rodoviário, Brasil, DEA, Condutores de eficiência, Dados em painel

 Trabalhos de pesquisa