Li-Hsueh Chen

Productivity Growth of Taiwanese International Tourist Hotels in a Metafrontier Framework

Due to the vigorous development of the tourism industry in Taiwan, the number of international tourist hotels has been on an upward trend. To survive in an increasingly competitive environment, it is important to seek out improvement in performance. This study measures the performance of fifty-four international tourist hotels in Taiwan from 2008 to 2011 by using the metafrontier Malmquist productivity index. This index satisfies the requirement of circularity, is immune to linear programming infeasibility, overcomes the problem of base period dependency, and considers the heterogeneity among hotels. To investigate sources of productivity change, this index can be further decomposed into within-group efficiency change, within-group technical change, and technical leadership change. The empirical results indicate that the use of different technologies by hotels affects the productivity change. Both within-group efficiency and technical changes are the main factors of productivity change. Chain hotels are technology leaders, and independent hotels are followers. By identifying each competitor’s productivity change, operators can refer to appropriate best-practice hotels to improve their operations.

Profitability efficiency, marketability efficiency and technology gaps in Taiwan’s banking industry: meta-frontier network data envelopment analysis

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to measure the profitability efficiency (PE) and marketability efficiency (ME) of non-homogenous Taiwanese banks after the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards by using the convex meta-frontier data envelopment analysis model. The model is applied to simultaneously estimate PE and ME of the banks in financial holding companies (FHCs) and the banks not in FHCs. The meta-inefficiencies in individual processes are further decomposed into group inefficiencies and technology gap inefficiencies to explore the sources of inefficiency. The empirical results indicate that the banks in FHCs can reduce more costs than the banks not in FHCs, whereas the banks not in FHCs can create greater market value than the banks in FHCs. For the banks joining and not in FHCs, technology gap inefficiency is the main source of inefficiencies in both profitability and marketability processes.

Assessment of Transportation Performance: A Network Structure

Performance measurement is a popular activity of organizations in the transportation sector. Various studies on the performance of transportation organizations with the utilization of data envelopment analysis models have been common. However, based on the unstorable characteristics of transportation services, conventional data envelopment analysis models are not suitable, and then network data envelopment analysis models are proposed. This chapter is dedicated to describe the network operational structure of transportation organizations and the relative network data envelopment analysis model. In order to be closer to real operational situations, four operational characteristics, which are route-based performance evaluation, environmental factors, undesirable outputs, multi-activity framework, are discussed and incorporated into the network data envelopment analysis model, respectively.

Internal Structure of Service Organization: From Multi-activity Financial Institutions to Network Structure Hotels

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been frequently used to measure the performance in the financial services and hotel industries. In recent years, based on characteristics that operational processes of financial institutions and hotels may jointly engage in multiple activities and multiple processes, DEA has been further developed to consider internal structures of financial institutions and hotels. This chapter is dedicated to describing internal structures of financial institutions and hotels as well as providing relative DEA models and applications. The chapter illustrates that in order to conform to real operational situations, the construction of DEA model should consider and match the internal operational characteristics of decision making units.