Application of Decision Tree and Relative Proximity to Evaluation of Sustainable Development Capacities of Listed Electric Power Companies

Abstract

In a complex market environment with fierce competition, maintaining their current market positions is an important issue for electric power companies. Sustainable development not only requires them to pay attention to their current operating efficiencies but also to actively participate in environmental and social responsibilities to maintain their competitive advantages. This paper proposes a model for evaluating the sustainable development capacities of power companies. Firstly, the preliminary evaluation indicator system is constructed with the seven dimensions of production safety, public relations and social welfare, shareholder rights protection, environmental sustainability, employee rights protection, scientific research innovation ability, and financial status. Then, specific financial indicators are selected by CART to avoid indicator redundancies and the final evaluation indicator system is constructed. Finally, the relative proximity calculated by the TOPSIS method is applied to evaluate the sustainable development capacities. An empirical study of 18 listed electric power companies is conducted to verify the evaluation model. The results show that the performances of these companies in production safety and environmental sustainability are generally satisfactory, but the overall performances in public relations and social welfare, employee rights protection, and scientific research innovation ability are relatively poor, so these dimensions should be strengthened.

Factors of Sustainable Competitiveness at Company Level: A Comparison of Four Global Economic Sectors

“…Aiming to "reveal and assess the possibilities of the industry's sustainable competitiveness in Latvia and Lithuania", Danilevičienė and Lace (2021) use the total factor productivity (TFP), return on equity (ROE) and comparative analysis, and rank the growth of sustainable competitiveness in different industries' in the two countries. Mou et al (2022) propose a model to evaluate the sustainable development capacities of electric power companies, using seven dimensions (production safety, public relations and social welfare, shareholder rights protection, environmental sustainability, employee rights protection, scientific research innovation ability, and financial status), and test the results on 18 listed electric power companies. Using a questionnaire survey (applied to selected Czech organizations) and factor analysis (Vrabcova et al, 2022) identify "six factors, namely, the integrated management system, employee development, CSR reporting, the organizational structure for innovation development, succession planning, and knowledge continuity" as "Strategic Trends of Organizations in the Context of New Perspectives of Sustainable Competitiveness".…”

A TOPSIS‐Based Decision Model to Establish Priorities for Sequencing the Design of Construction Projects in the Public Sector

“…Behzadian et al [16] presented a literature review on TOPSIS, analyzing over 200 papers published between 2000 and 2012. Tey have found a wide range of applications using this method successfully in several contexts, such as mixed trafc fow along freeways [17], logistics [18], manufacturing systems [19,20], business and management [21,22], and health environment management [23], therefore considering interdisciplinary and social decision problems. Also, to allow the inclusion of variability and limitations in the human cognitive capacity, there have been propositions to use fuzzy sets associated with TOPSIS [24].…”