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Purpose – The accounting literature has demonstrated increased concern over issues of sustainability. One of the most critical issues that corporations face at the moment is climate change. This especially concerns companies that are substantial consumers of materials and energy. Corporations have increasingly acknowledged that to address this issue the existing ways of managing business must be changed.

This study examines the challenges posed by measurement of energy efficiency performance in an energy-intensive industry. It covers the challenges encountered with respect to the energy efficiency indicator and its use as a management tool.

Methodology – The case study method was used to conduct the research, which took place in a single firm in an energy-intensive process industry.

Findings – The results indicate that the current energy efficiency indicator, specific energy consumption (SEC), does not meet the criteria for good performance measurement. In particular, the controllability of energy efficiency seems problematic. Another major challenge is target setting. Measurable targets are needed to identify and prioritise areas where consumption and emission can be reduced.

Practical implications – The study provides practical knowledge on what is happening in organisations that pursue sustainable development and in particular, environmental efficiency.

Originality/value – Although the conceptual challenges in energy efficiency measurement are well known in the technical literature, discussions dealing with its management have been few in number. This study is a cross-disciplinary work and combines technical energy efficiency literature and management accounting research on performance management.

Purpose – This paper focuses on efficiency as a central theme of the Italian health care reforms, combining macrolevel policies with microlevel (i.e., operating room) perceptions of the concept.

Design/Methodology/Approach – According to the phenomenographic approach, this analysis investigates how the components of a surgical team (22 semistructured interviews) experience efficiency in their daily workflows.

Findings – The main findings show that the concept of efficiency is multidimensional. According to participants’ perspective, several categories of efficiency collected in an outcome space emphasize an holistic view of efficiency driving health policies and strategies.

Social implications – The suggestion of further relationships between perspectives and other constructs (i.e., quality, safety, patient focus, process) at micro and macro level could enhance the impact of health reforms.

Originality/Value – A qualitative approach conducted at microlevel help to recognize the phenomenon (of efficiency), engaging the individual conception that practitioners have of the health efficiency.

Introduction – In recent years, there has been a growing interest in innovation, not only in developed countries but also in developing countries. However, there has been limited literature for the developing countries.

Purpose – The literature on national innovation systems (NIS) mainly consists of case studies or qualitative researches aiming to explain the patterns of innovation, while the quantitative analysis are limited in explaining the innovation capability and efficiency of innovation. This study is unique in a sense that it compares the innovation efficiencies of the EECA countries. This chapter aims to measure the efficiency of NIS via data envelopment analysis (DEA) method.

Methodology – DEA is used to consider a sample of 18 Eastern European and Central Asian (EECA) countries and Turkey. One of the main issues is to determine the input and output variables because the available data for some of these countries were limited. Therefore, research and development expenditure (% of GDP), government expenditure on education, total (% of GDP), imports of goods and services (% of GDP) and foreign direct investment, net inflows (% of GDP) were determined as input variables. Output variables were as follows; patent applications both residents and non-residents, high-technology exports (% of manufactured exports) and scientific and technical journal articles.

Findings – Based on the key findings it can be noted that Kazakhstan, Turkey, Latvia and Uzbekistan are more efficient in innovation performance compared to other EECA countries. Throughout the results of the DEA, these countries may develop new policies about their innovation systems to reach out the higher performance.

We present empirical evidence on the productive efficiency of electric utilities in the United States from 1990 to 2004. This period is marked by major attempts to introduce deregulation with an expectation that it will lead to improved operating efficiency and ultimately to lower consumer prices. However, relying on improved techniques of estimating productive efficiency, we find that firms in jurisdictions that adopted deregulation have in fact lower productive efficiency, and have also experienced decreases in efficiency over time. In particular, the vertical separation of generation, a hallmark of an effort to deregulate the industry, is associated with an adverse impact on productive efficiency.

This paper analyses the mechanisms through which profit-sharing schemes may induce debt constrained firms to improve technical efficiency over time to guarantee positive profits. This hypothesis is first formalised in a partial equilibrium framework and then is tested on a sample of Italian traditional and cooperative firms. Technical efficiency change indexes are computed by DEA. These are regressed on a measure of finance constraints to analyse their impact on firms’ efficiency growth. The results support the hypothesis that a restriction in the availability of financial resources can affect positively the growth in efficiency in firms with profit-sharing schemes.

Introduction: Performance evaluations are a critical tool in evaluating tourism development of countries where the tourism industry provides a significant share of the GDP. One of the measures used in performance evaluation of the financial decision-making units is economic efficiency. Aim: This study aims at measuring tourism-related technical efficiency performance of six European countries: Spain, Greece, Turkey, France, Italy, and Portugal. Method: Tourism revenue and visitor numbers are referenced as output variables. Within the model, the natural and sociocultural index and substructure index were formed. Data envelopment analysis was applied for these datasets. Results: Considering tourism revenues, Spain, Italy and Greece managed to use their natural and cultural resources efficiently. In contrast to these countries, inefficiency level scores were measured for Turkey, Portugal and France. In the model based upon the number of visitors, all other countries apart from Turkey and Portugal achieved the most efficient score. As for substructure index, the score of decreasing returns to scale for the countries of Italy and Spain in terms of tourist numbers is noteworthy. Conclusion: The implementation of efficient tourism policies and strategies hold great importance in terms of tourism efficiency. Implications: Even though Portugal and Turkey are rich in both natural and cultural assets, low scores seem to stem from failure to realize their potentials. Strategies should be developed to diversify tourist products. Originality of the Paper: This study differs from other studies in the literature with regard to the composition of the wide input components.

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) provide a mechanism through which investors can participate in the real estate market with liquidity and transparency. In this study, we benchmark the performance of 11 residential REITs for the period 2009–2013. The study tracks the performance of residential REITs through the economic crisis period. The data envelopment analysis (DEA) model uses well-performing units (efficiency of 1% or 100%) that are closest to the underperforming unit on the efficiency frontier as a “role model” (peer units) for the underperforming unit. In addition, the DEA model also calculates by how much a nonperforming unit should increase the output level or decrease the inputs level to be on the efficiency frontier (100%) (slack values). Thus, the DEA model identifies the underperforming units and the most feasible path to move to efficiency frontier. The DEA model identifies the peer units that are closely related to these units and calculates the value of the slack variables required to achieve the same efficiency level as their peers.

Skincare, hair care, make-up, perfumes, toiletries and deodorants, and oral cosmetics are the main product categories of the cosmetic market. Since the early twentieth century, the production of cosmetics and beauty products has been controlled by a handful of multi-national corporations. COVID-19 impacted the cosmetics industry in several different and sometimes conflicting ways. This study benchmarks the performance of 20 largest cosmetics companies against their competition as well as against their previous years to analyze the impact of COVID-19. We find that only one company has consistently performed than its peers over the period of 2015–2020. We also find that average efficiency score of cosmetics companies declines in 2020 relative to 2019.

The objective of this study is to investigate the simultaneity between farm couples’ decisions on labor allocation and production efficiency. Using an unbalanced panel data set of Norwegian farm households (1989–2008), we estimate off-farm labor supply of married farm couples and farm efficiency in a three-equation system of jointly determined endogenous variables. We address the issue of latent heterogeneity between households. We solve the problem by two-stage OLS and GLS estimation where state dependence is accounted for in the reduced form equations. We compare the results against simpler model specifications where we suppress censoring of off-farm labor hours and endogeneity of regressors, respectively. In the reduced form specification, a considerably large number of parameters are statistically significant. Davidson–McKinnon test of exogeneity confirms that both operator and spouse's off-farm labor supply should be treated as endogenous in estimating farming efficiency. The parameter estimates seem robust across model specifications. Off-farm labor supply of farm operators and spouses is jointly determined. Off-farm work by farm operator and spouses positively affects farming efficiency. Farming efficiency increases with operator's age, farm size, agricultural subsidises, and share of current investment to total farm capital stock.