Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how debt affects the cost structure of a farm. Agency costs arise when stakeholders of a farm manage their farm differently to obtain debt which results in inefficiencies. These inefficiencies cause a farm to deviate from cost minimization...

Purpose – The paper aims to find the functional relationship among 14 shampoo brands' price, quality, marketing expense and sales in the Chinese shampoo industry. Also studied is which one, among these factors, is the more important. Design/methodology/approach – By using data envelopment...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study whether Islamic investors lose portfolio efficiency due to a limited asset universe. Design/methodology/approach – The paper contributes to prior literature by using non‐parametrical measurements of efficiency instead of regular...

Purpose – Selecting appropriate variables for analytical studies is critical for the validity of analysis. It is the same with data envelopment analysis (DEA) studies. In this study, for benchmarking using DEA, the paper seeks to suggest a novel framework based on return on assets (ROA), which...

Purpose – The quantity and quality of available water resources have been recognized limiting factors in development of most of the arid and semi arid regions. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency, for water users' associations (WUA), of irrigation project Samrat Ashok Sagar...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to benchmark the Indian mobile telecommunication service providers for relative efficiencies. In this paper, a method for benchmarking performance of mobile telecom utilities based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) is presented. The paper discusses some...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the longitudinal efficiency of branch operations of a third party logistics (3PL) company for comparative performance measurement and internal benchmarking. Design/methodology/approach – Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used for measuring...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate clinical departments' performance per clinical sector in the context of the Greek public hospital care system. Design/methodology/approach – The sample consisted of 96 internal pathology and surgical clinical departments in 15 hospitals in...

Purpose – In this paper, the authors extend the goal-directed benchmarking theory proposed by Stewart for benchmarking and selecting suppliers. This extension is in recognition of the fact that benchmarking for suppliers is more than a pure monitoring process and includes a component of future...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the feasibility of using artificial neural networks (ANNs) in conjunction with data envelopment analysis (DEA) for the performance measurement of major mobile phone providers, and for subsequent predictions related to best performance...