A novel approach for determining common weights in two division network DEA: a case study of Science and Technology Parks in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Data Envelopment Analysis is a popular tool for assessing the relative efficiency of units, treated as a whole unit, without considering the internal structure of decision-making units. In contrast to the conventional models, Network DEA models consider the internal operations of units. In both models, the most favourable weights of the input–output factors for each unit are used. One of the main pitfalls of these models is that they require a set of n different vectors of these weights for the units, thus the factors may not have the same importance for each unit. To overcome this drawback and avoid ignoring some factors, several methods have been proposed to determine a common set of weights (CSWs) of the factors. However, none of the proposed approaches can determine the CSWs in network DEA models. This paper contributes to the existing literature by proposing a novel approach for determining the CSWs based on Entropy Method. Finally, the proposed approach is applied to demonstrate their applicability in both numerical and illustration examples. Moreover, a case of assessment of Science and Technology Parks in Turkey was used for the purpose of illustration.

KEYWORDS:

• Network DEA
• two division structure
• data envelopment analysis
• common set of weights
• entropy method

⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Volkan Soner Özsoy

Volkan Soner Özsoy is Assistant Professor in the Department of Finance, Banking and Insurance at Aksaray University, Turkey. He has a PhD degree in Department of Statistics at Gazi University. His areas of interest include operations research, optimization, multicriteria decision-making, performance evaluation, benchmarking and data envelopment analysis. He published articles in journals like Applied Mathematics and Computation, Expert Systems with Application, Computational Statistics and Annals of Operations Research.

Önder Belgin

Önder Belgin has a PhD degree in Industrial Engineering at Gazi University. He works for Republic of Turkey Ministry of Industry and Technology as an expert. He also has several papers on telecommunication network design, simulation optimisation and logistics in refereed journals.

Dursun Balkan

Dursun Balkan is Assistant Professor in Department of Industrial Engineering at University of Turkish Aeronautical Association, Ankara, Turkey. He has a PhD degree in Industrial Engineering at Gazi University. He also has several papers on efficient analysis, optimisation and logistics in refereed journals.