A postmodern turn to estimating performance frontiers

International Journal of Applied Decision Sciences

Volumn 1, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 107-124

  Storbeck, James E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT BROWNSVILLE   (United States)

Author keywords

Data Envelopment Analysis; DEA; performance; postmodernism; social construction

Indexed keywords

EID: 84969449161     PISSN: 17558077     EISSN: 17558085     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1504/IJADS.2008.017954     Document Type: Article

References (67)

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55. The dissemination of the so-called ‘DEA model’ has been faithfully documented in a number of bibliographies by Lawrence Seiford, one of the more recent being Seiford (1996), as well as an updated CD-version included with the Cooper et al. (2000) book. Forsund and Sarafoglou (2005) address the diffusion of the original Farrell nonparametric model in economics – as well as the ‘DEA’ version in OR/MS – by means of citation analysis.
56. Indeed, the initial paper (Charnes et al., 1978) referred to concepts of ‘Farrell efficiency’ before the term of DEA was ever mentioned.
57. For an interesting discussion of mathematics as the product of embodied human experience rather than as a neutral system of (external) Platonic concepts, see Lakoff and Nunez (2000).
58. See Chia’s (1995) exposition of the Woolgar framework.
59. Essentialism, as used in this study, is based on the notion that ‘things’ can be grouped in mutually exclusive, discrete categories; a ‘softer’ form of this philosophy, so-called psychological essentialism, suggests that – even if things can not be discretely grouped, we think and act as if they can be. Malt’s (1994) work, however, has shown that neither of these beliefs can consistently account for the common use of basic terms – even terms as basic as ‘water’. Her work has shown that our categorisation of phenomena is dependent – in part, at least – on our life world experiences with those phenomena. For an extended discussion of categorisation schemes based on prototype theory (rather than essentialist thinking), see Lakoff (1987).
60. Midgley (2003) speaks of the juncture of the modernity debate with the ORS debate on the role of experts, science, and the definition of ‘improvement’. Occurring largely within the UK ORS research community in the early 1990s, studies included Flood (1990), Jackson (1991), Taket and White (1993, 1994), Hamden (1994) and White and Taket (1994). Much of this work was carried forward by Munro (1997), who explored the possibility of developing emancipatory methodologies in ORS.
61. O’Neill (1998) points out that much of market economics theory has been captured by the catallactic model, where decision making roles (such as that of the ‘consumer’) have little if anything to do with humans; instead, they are defined simply by the aggregation of disembodied functions.
62. 2, should not be considered a ‘hard’ target, in that it is derived from the intersection of the iso-performance path and an exogenously-stated (arbitrary) performance goal articulated by management. The focus on this type of solution should remain on the decision making improvement ‘process’ suggested by this conceptualisation of ‘good’ performance.
63. Traditional DEA enthusiasts, however, will be quick to point out that the ‘importance weights’ each DMU places upon its use of various input-output combinations can be recovered from the dual variables, whose values are imputed in the analytical solution of the problem. This amounts to an essentialist position of inferring values from the [observed] factive position of the DMU; it in no way captures a ‘negotiated’ path of improvement.
64. That is, projections to positions on the frontier, where one or more dimensions of the ‘production function’ receive ‘zero’ importance weights, infers that the decision maker would not ‘value’ these dimensions positively! Thus, if ‘zero’ valuation of inputs and/or outputs is allowed to stand, such analysis might be seen to signal the lack of an accepted homogeneous production function used by all parties. In Pomo terms, this might be said to signal the absence of a grand narrative of production.
65. The traditional DEA researcher would not find such a target acceptable, and would use the residual adjustment procedures developed by Charnes et al. (1978) in order to move the projected target – in this case – to frontier point A. The consequence of this residual adjustment, however, ‘moves’ C’s efficient frontier target off the radial path (to the position of DMU A), which problematises the representational validity of C’s eventual target. Ironically, this proposed ‘adjustment’ violates one of the basic organising principles of the DEA model – that of the ‘fairness’ of frontier targets derived from the radial projection. Such radially-derived targets are deemed to be the ‘fairest possible’ targets for the associated DMU, since the target production schedule is identical to the observed production schedule in terms of the ‘mix’ of production factors. The subsequent ‘adjusted’ target changes this mix and, I would argue, yields a suggested solution that questions the model’s own stated virtue of producing ‘representational’ best practice solutions. In Pomo terms, we might say that it ‘cracks the mirror’ to reality!
66. In the period of time surrounding the intial DEA publication (1976–1980), Professor Abraham Charnes often spoke to his seminars of the way in which the ‘DEA’ model developed – initially within the context of the doctoral work of Eduardo Rhodes, Professor William Cooper’s student at Harvard. In fact, Charnes mentioned on numerous occasions that the introduction of the term ‘DMU’ was not a trivial decision, as the ‘CCR’ research team wanted to avoid the use of the term of the firm (in an industry), language common to economic theory. Charnes was clear that DEA was not to be seen as part of economic theory! These first studies, after all, were conducted in the area of educational program evaluation on the basis of cognitive and non-cognitive dimensions of student performance. Thus, I personally view these initial organising decisions as small-but-significant moves motivated by postmodern sensibilities with regard to ‘language games’.
67. Within the organisational context, Boje (2001) suggests that we might critically deconstruct such narratives that eliminate or ignore the plural stories of our life world.