Title: Combining the priority rankings of DEA and AHP methodologies: a case study on an ICT industry

Authors: Emmanouil Stiakakis; Angelo Sifaleras

Addresses: Department of Applied Informatics, University of Macedonia, 156 Egnatia Str., 54006 Thessaloniki, Greece ' Department of Technology Management, University of Macedonia, Loggou-Tourpali, 59200 Naoussa, Greece

Abstract: This article presents a case study on how data envelopment analysis (DEA) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) could be combined to produce priority rankings for a set of companies. The shortcomings of each method, when exclusively used to deal with multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) problems, are also analysed. The dataset of this study, arising from the European Union (EU) Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard (European Commission, 2009), consists of the top EU companies activating in the telecommunications equipment industry, which is one of the most representative information and communications technology (ICT) industries. Five criteria, namely, R&D investment, number of employees, capital expenditure, net sales, and operating profit, are used for defining priority rankings of these companies. The application of the case study indicates that the super-efficiency DEA model could be employed for ranking the companies at an initial stage; following that, ranking of the efficient companies could be attained through AHP.

Keywords: multicriteria decision analysis; MCDA; decision making; data envelopment analysis; DEA; analytical hierarchy process; AHP; priority rankings; ranking companies; telecommunications equipment; information and communications technology; ICT; information technology; R&D investment; number of employees; capital expenditure; net sales; operating profit; research and development.

DOI: 10.1504/IJDATS.2013.051743

International Journal of Data Analysis Techniques and Strategies, 2013 Vol.5 No.1, pp.101 - 114

Published online: 28 Feb 2014 *

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