Analysis of the efficiency of insurance companies in Serbia using the fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS methods

The aim of this study is to propose a fuzzy multi-criteria model that will facilitate the assessment of insurance companies’ efficiency. This study includes all companies operating within the insurance sector in Serbia in the period from 2007 to 2014 and the data were used from the published financial statements of insurance companies. Five key indicators were identified for the assessment and rating of insurance companies. Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) and Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) were used for building the proposed model. In the first stage, priority weights of criteria were defined by using the FAHP, while in the second phase the insurance companies were ranked using the TOPSIS method

Analysis of Private Pension Companies in Turkey by EATWOS

One problem that nations face in the progress of their economies is individuals not knowing how to save. Private Pension System (PPS) is one way to help a nation’s economy by encouraging individuals to save on voluntary basis. There are many companies in Turkey operating in PPS, which are called Private Pension Companies (PPC). The more funds they collect, the longer these companies can sustain and the more they can contribute to the economy. Therefore PPCs need to pursue ways to improve themselves in order to keep operating with a high performance.The aim of this study is to demonstrate the performances of 19 PPCs operating in Turkey between 2010 and 2014. The performances of the PPCs were analyzed by applying Efficiency Analysis Technique with Output Satisficing (EATWOS) in 3 different ways. The inputs used in the study are “number of staff employed”, “total assets”, and “total shareholders' equity” while the criteria outputs have been determined as “premium production” and “pension contracts”. The first application of the method revealed that ANADOLU, VAKIF and ZIRAAT were the top 3 companies working with high efficiency. The second application resulted that ALLIANZ, ANADOLU, AVIVASA, CIGNA, GARANTI, VAKIF and ZIRAAT showed better performances than the rest. The third application demonstrated that ALLIANZ, AVIVASA, GARANTI, and VAKIF were the most efficient companies Keywords: Private Pension, Efficiency Analysis, EATWO

An integrated Multi-Criteria Decision Making Model for Sustainability Performance Assessment for Insurance Companies

To stay competitive in a business environment, continuous performance evaluation based on the triple bottom line standard of sustainability is necessary. There is a gap in addressing the computational expense caused by increased decision units due to increasing the performance evaluation indices to more accuracy in the evaluation. We successfully addressed these two gaps through (1) using principal component analysis (PCA) to cut the number of evaluation indices, and (2) since PCA itself has the problem of merely using the data distribution without considering the domain-related knowledge, we utilized Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to rank the indices through the expert’s domain-related knowledge. We propose an integrated approach for sustainability performance assessment in qualitative and quantitative perspectives. Fourteen insurance companies were evaluated using eight economic, three environmental, and four social indices. The indices were ranked by expert judgment though an analytical hierarchy process as subjective weighting, and then principal component analysis as objective weighting was used to reduce the number of indices. The obtained principal components were then used as variables in the data envelopment analysis model. So, subjective and objective evaluations were integrated. Finally, for validating the results, Spearman and Kendall’s Tau correlation tests were used. The results show that Dana, Razi, and Dey had the best sustainability performance.This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Assessmen

Referans İdeal Metodu ile Finansal Performans Analizi: BİST Sigorta Şirketleri Üzerinde Bir Uygulama

Finansal oranlara dayanan performans değerlendirmesi çalışmalarında Çok Kriterli Karar Verme (ÇKKV) yöntemleri kullanılmaktadır. Referans İdeal Metodu (RİM) yeni geliştirilmiş bir ÇKKV yöntemidir. Yöntemin diğer ÇKKV yöntemlerinden farkı kriterler için ideal aralık ya da nokta kullanıyor olmasıdır. Bazı finansal oranlar için tavsiye edilen ideal aralıklar vardır. Bu finansal oranlar kullanılarak yapılan performans değerlendirmesi çalışmaları RİM’i uygun bir yöntem haline getirmektedir. Bu nedenle bu çalışmada RİM kullanarak finansal oranlara dayanan performans değerlendirmesi yapılmış ve RİM’in bu alanda kullanılmasının uygunluğu incelenmiştir. Çalışmanın sonucunda RİM’in finansal oranlara dayalı performans değerlendirilmesinde uygun bir yöntem olduğu görülmüştür. Ancak karar vericiler ideal aralık belirlenirken dikkatli olmalıdır

A Framework for Prioritizing Opportunities of Improvement in the Context of Business Excellence Model in Healthcare Organization

In today\u27s world, the healthcare sector is facing challenges to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its operations. More and more improvement projects are being adopted to enhance healthcare services, making it more patient-centric, and enabling better cost control. Healthcare organizations strive to identify and carry out such improvement initiatives to sustain their businesses and gain competitive advantage. Seeking to reach a higher operational level of excellence, healthcare organizations utilize business excellence criteria to conduct assessment and identify organizational strengths and weaknesses. However, while such assessments routinely identify numerous areas for potential improvement, it is not feasible to conduct all improvement projects simultaneously due to limitations in time, capital, and personnel, as well as conflict with other organization\u27s projects or strategic objectives. An effective prioritization and selection approach is valuable in that it can assist the organization to optimize its available resources and outcomes. This study attempts to enable such an approach by developing a framework to prioritize improvement opportunities in healthcare in the context of the business excellence model through the integration of the Fuzzy Delphi Method and Fuzzy Interface System. To carry out the evaluation process, the framework consists of two phases. The first phase utilizes Fuzzy Delphi Method to identify the most significant factors that should be considered in healthcare for electing the improvement projects. The FDM is employed to handle the subjectivity of human assessment. The research identifies potential factors for evaluating projects, then utilizes FDM to capture expertise knowledge. The first round in FDM is intended to validate the identified list of factors from experts; which includes collecting additional factors from experts that the literature might have overlooked. When an acceptable level of consensus has been reached, a second round is conducted to obtain experts\u27 and other related stakeholders\u27 opinions on the appropriate weight of each factor\u27s importance. Finally, FDM analyses eliminate or retain the criteria to produce a final list of critical factors to select improvement projects. The second phase in the framework attempts to prioritize improvement initiatives using the Hierarchical Fuzzy Interface System. The Fuzzy Interface System combines the experts\u27 ratings for each improvement opportunity with respect to the factors deemed critical to compute the priority index. In the process of calculating the priority index, the framework allows the estimation of other intermediate indices including: social, financial impact, strategical, operational feasibility, and managerial indices. These indices bring an insight into the improvement opportunities with respect to each framework\u27s dimensions. The framework allows for a reduction of the bias in the assessment by developing a knowledge based on the perspectives of multiple experts

Sustainable Assessment in Supply Chain and Infrastructure Management

In the competitive business environment or public domain, the sustainability assessment in supply chain and infrastructure management are important for any organization. Organizations are currently striving to improve their sustainable strategies through preparedness, response, and recovery because of increasing competitiveness, community, and regulatory pressure. Thus, it is necessary to develop a meaningful and more focused understanding of sustainability in supply chain management and infrastructure management practices. In the context of a supply chain, sustainability implies that companies identify, assess, and manage impacts and risks in all the echelons of the supply chain, considering downstream and upstream activities. Similarly, the sustainable infrastructure management indicates the ability of infrastructure to meet the requirements of the present without sacrificing the ability of future generations to address their needs. The complexities regarding sustainable supply chain and infrastructure management have driven managers and professionals to seek different solutions. This Special Issue aims to provide readers with the most recent research results on the aforementioned subjects. In addition, it offers some solutions and also raises some questions for further research and development toward sustainable supply chain and infrastructure management

Uncertain Multi-Criteria Optimization Problems

Most real-world search and optimization problems naturally involve multiple criteria as objectives. Generally, symmetry, asymmetry, and anti-symmetry are basic characteristics of binary relationships used when modeling optimization problems. Moreover, the notion of symmetry has appeared in many articles about uncertainty theories that are employed in multi-criteria problems. Different solutions may produce trade-offs (conflicting scenarios) among different objectives. A better solution with respect to one objective may compromise other objectives. There are various factors that need to be considered to address the problems in multidisciplinary research, which is critical for the overall sustainability of human development and activity. In this regard, in recent decades, decision-making theory has been the subject of intense research activities due to its wide applications in different areas. The decision-making theory approach has become an important means to provide real-time solutions to uncertainty problems. Theories such as probability theory, fuzzy set theory, type-2 fuzzy set theory, rough set, and uncertainty theory, available in the existing literature, deal with such uncertainties. Nevertheless, the uncertain multi-criteria characteristics in such problems have not yet been explored in depth, and there is much left to be achieved in this direction. Hence, different mathematical models of real-life multi-criteria optimization problems can be developed in various uncertain frameworks with special emphasis on optimization problems

Fuzzy Sets in Business Management, Finance, and Economics

This book collects fifteen papers published in s Special Issue of Mathematics titled “Fuzzy Sets in Business Management, Finance, and Economics”, which was published in 2021. These paper cover a wide range of different tools from Fuzzy Set Theory and applications in many areas of Business Management and other connected fields. Specifically, this book contains applications of such instruments as, among others, Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, Neuro-Fuzzy Methods, the Forgotten Effects Algorithm, Expertons Theory, Fuzzy Markov Chains, Fuzzy Arithmetic, Decision Making with OWA Operators and Pythagorean Aggregation Operators, Fuzzy Pattern Recognition, and Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets. The papers in this book tackle a wide variety of problems in areas such as strategic management, sustainable decisions by firms and public organisms, tourism management, accounting and auditing, macroeconomic modelling, the evaluation of public organizations and universities, and actuarial modelling. We hope that this book will be useful not only for business managers, public decision-makers, and researchers in the specific fields of business management, finance, and economics but also in the broader areas of soft mathematics in social sciences. Practitioners will find methods and ideas that could be fruitful in current management issues. Scholars will find novel developments that may inspire further applications in the social sciences

Sustainable Construction Engineering and Management

This Book is a Printed Edition of the Special Issue which covers sustainability as an emerging requirement in the fields of construction management, project management and engineering. We invited authors to submit their theoretical or experimental research articles that address the challenges and opportunities for sustainable construction in all its facets, including technical topics and specific operational or procedural solutions, as well as strategic approaches aimed at the project, company or industry level. Central to developments are smart technologies and sophisticated decision-making mechanisms that augment sustainable outcomes. The Special Issue was received with great interest by the research community and attracted a high number of submissions. The selection process sought to balance the inclusion of a broad representative spread of topics against research quality, with editors and reviewers settling on thirty-three articles for publication. The Editors invite all participating researchers and those interested in sustainable construction engineering and management to read the summary of the Special Issue and of course to access the full-text articles provided in the Book for deeper analyses