Resource allocation with Time Series DEA applied to Brazilian Federal Saving banks

One limitation in the economic analysis of efficiency and productivity is the impossibility to determine whether a service organization has reached their optimum output-to-input configuration, i.e. whether efficient units could be more efficient or whether inefficient units have reached their maximum potential and could not improve their performance. In this work, the usage of time series data instead of cross-sectional data from different DMUs is motivated to avoid this problematic of comparing units which might significantly differ in their internal structure (production technology) even presenting similar input/output levels. From the optimum output-to-input ratio, resource lacks (with respect to projected goals) and slacks can be determined for each decision unit evaluated individually. The case of Brazilian Federal Saving banks is presented as an empirical application of the methodology

Combining multi-criteria and directional distances to decompose non-compensatory measures of sustainable banking efficiency

Non compensatory choices are widespread in the economics, strategic management and decision making. Nevertheless, many assessments of productivity still fail to consider non-compensatory preference structures in the measure of the technical inefficiency. This paper proposes a preference elicitation schema, typical of Multi-criteria decision analysis, for the selection of the directional vector in the assessment of a sustainable productivity. The direction choice is based on the weighted aggregation of concordance indexes for each decision criteria on each individual input, such that it represents an index of relative importance according to the decision maker’s perspective. The methodology can be used to aid resource allocation and saving, identify benchmarks for efficient practices and more generally for planning environmental policies in many services and industrial organizations. We illustrate the method with an environmental efficiency evaluation of Brazilian Federal Saving Bank branches

Multicriteria Model for Organizational Green Information Technology Maturity Assessment and Benchmarking: Defining a Class Structure

Assessing Green Information Technology (IT) maturity in organizations is a relevant process to measure the progress of sustainable IT initiatives and to support new actions to improve them. Knowledge about the organizational maturity level in Green IT and comparing this level with those of other companies are necessary for self-assessment to strengthen organizations’ general sustainability strategy. The main objective of this paper is to communicate a Green IT maturity assessment model with its class structure. This model can also provide benchmarking regarding organizations’ maturity since its fundamental premise is a pairwise comparison between companies to obtain their classification. Based on a literature search to identify the existing maturity models, the CMMI model was selected since it is the most recurrent in the literature on managing organizational Green IT actions. The classification process using CMMI maturity levels as classes is based on the ELECTRE IV multicriteria decision support method, which was developed to work specifically with classification problems. The results include the companies’ allocation into the most appropriate classes, considering well-defined criteria set with their weights, the class boundaries according to numerical parameters such as lower and upper limits for each of them, and data collected on companies under consideration for the assessment

Multicriteria Model for Organizational Green Information Technology Maturity Assessment and Benchmarking: Defining a Class Structure

Assessing Green Information Technology (IT) maturity in organizations is a relevant process to measure the progress of sustainable IT initiatives and to support new actions to improve them. Knowledge about the organizational maturity level in Green IT and comparing this level with those of other companies are necessary for self-assessment to strengthen organizations’ general sustainability strategy. The main objective of this paper is to communicate a Green IT maturity assessment model with its class structure. This model can also provide benchmarking regarding organizations’ maturity since its fundamental premise is a pairwise comparison between companies to obtain their classification. Based on a literature search to identify the existing maturity models, the CMMI model was selected since it is the most recurrent in the literature on managing organizational Green IT actions. The classification process using CMMI maturity levels as classes is based on the ELECTRE IV multicriteria decision support method, which was developed to work specifically with classification problems. The results include the companies’ allocation into the most appropriate classes, considering well-defined criteria set with their weights, the class boundaries according to numerical parameters such as lower and upper limits for each of them, and data collected on companies under consideration for the assessment

Modeling sequential bargains and personalities in democratic deliberation systems: A NSS for social-efficient agreements

Purpose: This paper aims to introduce a negotiation support system (NSS) with a theoretical modeling that considers the aspects of human personality and negotiator’s behavior to assist the decision-making of public managers and stakeholders in democratic bargaining processes and support social-efficient outcomes. Design/methodology/approach: A game theoretical modeling of public participatory negotiations characterized by complete and perfect information is explored with the inclusion of personality aspects and negotiation styles. The importance of the negotiation knowledge disclosure in the sequential bargains of participative budgeting is highlighted by an experiment with 162 state-owned companies’ managers and graduate students to present the contribution of the system’s applicability. Findings: A considerable number of Pareto-efficient deliberation agreements are obtained with few interactions when the negotiation strategies and the personality aspects of opponents and stakeholders are freely available (a symmetry in the public negotiation knowledge). In addition to the set of Pareto-efficient agreements, those with the best social outcome (i.e. that maximize the group satisfaction despite individual losses) are observed when the informational tool for personality and negotiation style inference is enabled. Originality/value: Many scholars argue for Pareto-efficient allocation instead of equal divisions of resources within participative democracies and public governance. This work provides a new system with an empirical application and theoretical modeling which may support those arguments based on the nonverbal negotiation aspects

Quantifying Webpage Performance: A Comparative Analysis of TCP/IP and QUIC Communication Protocols for Improved Efficiency

Browsing is a prevalent activity on the World Wide Web, and users usually demonstrate significant expectations for expeditious information retrieval and seamless transactions. This article presents a comprehensive performance evaluation of the most frequently accessed webpages in recent years using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) adapted to the context (inverse DEA), comparing their performance under two distinct communication protocols: TCP/IP and QUIC. To assess performance disparities, parametric and non-parametric hypothesis tests are employed to investigate the appropriateness of each website’s communication protocols. We provide data on the inputs, outputs, and efficiency scores for 82 out of the world’s top 100 most-accessed websites, describing how experiments and analyses were conducted. The evaluation yields quantitative metrics pertaining to the technical efficiency of the websites and efficient benchmarks for best practices. Nine websites are considered efficient from the point of view of at least one of the communication protocols. Considering TCP/IP, about 80.5% of all units (66 webpages) need to reduce more than 50% of their page load time to be competitive, while this number is 28.05% (23 webpages), considering QUIC communication protocol. In addition, results suggest that TCP/IP protocol has an unfavorable effect on the overall distribution of inefficiencies

The COVID-19 Infodemic on Twitter: A Space and Time Topic Analysis of the Brazilian Immunization Program and Public Trust

The context of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light the infodemic phenomenon and the problem of misinformation. Agencies involved in managing COVID-19 immunization programs are also looking for ways to combat this problem, demanding analytical tools specialized in identifying patterns of misinformation and understanding how they have evolved in time and space to demonstrate their effects on public trust. The aim of this article is to present the results of a study applying topic analysis in space and time with respect to public opinion on the Brazilian COVID-19 immunization program. The analytical process involves applying topic discovery to tweets with geoinformation extracted from the COVID-19 vaccination theme. After extracting the topics, they were submitted to manual annotation, whereby the polarity labels pro, anti, and neutral were applied based on the support and trust in the COVID-19 vaccination. A space and time analysis was carried out using the topic and polarity distributions, making it possible to understand moments during which the most significant quantities of posts occurred and the cities that generated the most tweets. The analytical process describes a framework capable of meeting the needs of agencies for tools, providing indications of how misinformation has evolved and where its dissemination focuses, in addition to defining the granularity of this information according to what managers define as adequate. The following research outcomes can be highlighted. (1) We identified a specific date containing a peak that stands out among the other dates, indicating an event that mobilized public opinion about COVID-19 vaccination. (2) We extracted 23 topics, enabling the manual polarity annotation of each topic and an understanding of which polarities were associated with tweets. (3) Based on the association between polarities, topics, and tweets, it was possible to identify the Brazilian cities that produced the majority of tweets for each polarity and the amount distribution of tweets relative to cities populations

Strategic Behavior Categorization in Information Technology Outsourcing: An Analysis Based on Knowledge Transfer and Relational Governance

This paper proposes a strategic behavior categorization between the contractor and the provider in information technology (IT) outsourcing. We identified four behaviors (or attitudes) focusing specifically on the contractors’ attitudes: (a) conservative, (b) collaborative, (c) opportunistic, and (d) transformational. Theoretical concepts from IT Outsourcing, Relational Governance, and Knowledge Transfer were used to derive the study hypotheses. A questionnaire was developed to collect the information to test the hypotheses. An empirical analysis of a sample of 247 Brazilian companies was used, supporting the grouping of the companies as follows: 38.49% of them had the conservative attitude; 29.14% of them had the collaborative attitude; 14.97% of them had the opportunistic attitude; and 17.40% of them had the transformational attitude. We found that the relational attitudes should be adjusted to the individual contractors’ conditions, specific characteristics, and sectors. Our results also emphasize that the type of outsourced activity (traditional or customized) enables the managers to identify the need to balance the participation in relational governance. This study brings innovations to the understanding of the importance of the relationship between the contractor and the supplier, supporting, for example, the prioritization of new relational profiles according to the level of the IT service that was contracted, whether it is traditional or customized

When Penalty Fails: Modeling Contractual Misincentives With Evidence From Portugal ITO Agreements

A misincentive is characterized as an incentive producing the opposite effect of motivating or preventing some specific action. In some circumstances, contract penalties such as sanctions and fines on late delivery or low-quality software encourage the irregularities instead of preventing them from occurring. The present study models misincentive behaviors in Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) transactions as a Principal-Agent problem. Considering the non-linear relationship in software vendors’ cost structure and the client’s sensitivity to the product/service quality and delivery time, we offer theoretical modeling elucidating the best responses on agreements under incomplete and asymmetric information. Some empirical evidence of contractual misincentives is reported in outsourcing arrangements between private institutions and public administrations in Portugal. The contracts were divided into three categories: pure contracts with no incentive clauses, contracts with no explicit monetary penalties, and contracts under explicit sanctions. The results suggest that the knowledge of the penalty reduces the Agent’s uncertainty about the Principal’s cost structure and might lead them to intentionally delay the delivery of the technology

Strategic Behavior Categorization in Information Technology Outsourcing: An Analysis Based on Knowledge Transfer and Relational Governance

This paper proposes a strategic behavior categorization between the contractor and the provider in information technology (IT) outsourcing. We identified four behaviors (or attitudes) focusing specifically on the contractors’ attitudes: (a) conservative, (b) collaborative, (c) opportunistic, and (d) transformational. Theoretical concepts from IT Outsourcing, Relational Governance, and Knowledge Transfer were used to derive the study hypotheses. A questionnaire was developed to collect the information to test the hypotheses. An empirical analysis of a sample of 247 Brazilian companies was used, supporting the grouping of the companies as follows: 38.49% of them had the conservative attitude; 29.14% of them had the collaborative attitude; 14.97% of them had the opportunistic attitude; and 17.40% of them had the transformational attitude. We found that the relational attitudes should be adjusted to the individual contractors’ conditions, specific characteristics, and sectors. Our results also emphasize that the type of outsourced activity (traditional or customized) enables the managers to identify the need to balance the participation in relational governance. This study brings innovations to the understanding of the importance of the relationship between the contractor and the supplier, supporting, for example, the prioritization of new relational profiles according to the level of the IT service that was contracted, whether it is traditional or customized