On research efficiency: A micro-analysis of Dutch university research in Economics and Business Management

Abstract

We argue that efficiency assessments of academic research should focus on micro-units of research production rather than on conventionally employed (aggregated) macro-units, and show that such a detailed analysis of research performance provides interesting insights. In addition, we propose a non-parametric methodology that is specially tailored for analyzing the productive efficiency of research: it starts from a specification of the managerial objectives of research activities while imposing minimal structure on the (typically unknown) production technology. We illustrate our points by assessing the productive efficiency of research in Economics and Business Management faculties of Dutch universities. Next to measuring productive efficiency, we look for specific patterns in efficiency distributions over universities, years and areas of specialization. In addition, we investigate the impact of external funding and of the size of research programs on academic research efficiency.

The Educational Efficiency Evaluation Framework: By Using DEA Model and CA Method

“…Specific for educational domain, DEA approach is generally used for efficiency evaluation. Some recent references include Avkiran [8] and Abbott and Doucouliagos [9] for Australia, Salerno [10] and Calhoun [11] for the United States, Afonso and Santos [12] for Portugal, Warning [13] for Germany, Johnes [14] for England, Jongbloed and Salerno [15] and Cherchye and Abeele [16] for the Netherlands, and Castano and Cabanda [17] for the Philippines. Joumady and Ris [18] represent an exception as they work with a set of countries (Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom).…”

Organizational factors influencing scholarly performance: a multivariate study of biomedical research groups

“…Yet, funding sources have different expectations from the work they fund and elicit different strategies from applicants: Competitive research council funding focuses on stimulating academic careers (Bornmann et al 2010;Hornbostel et al 2009;Van den Besselaar and Leydesdorff 2009), and industry funding aims at useful (applied) research results (Groot and García-Valderrama 2006;Gulbrandsen and Smeby 2005;Carayol 2003;Louis et al 2007). However, quite some studies did not find a relation between funding levels and performance (Carayol and Matt 2006;Cherchye and Abeele 2005;Groot and García-Valderrama 2006). 1 In this paper we restrict ourselves to the management and leadership factors that influence scholarly performance of research teams.…”

“…Given the advantages of both big and small, it is suggested that research groups need critical mass but above a threshold productivity declines (Blackburn et al 1978;Stankiewicz 1979;Von Tunzelmann et al 2003). This threshold varies between research fields (Baird 1986;Kyvik 1995;Cherchye and Abeele 2005), and depends on the internal structure of the group. Distributed leadership, experienced group leaders, and a high level of group cohesiveness enable larger group sizes (Omta 1995;Mehra et al 2006;Stankiewicz, Stankiewicz 1979).…”

Analyzing Cost-Efficient Production Behavior Under Economies of Scope: A Nonparametric Methodology

“…Specifically, we evaluate the efficiency of 77 research programs organized at 8 universities. The same data set was studied by Cherchye and Vanden Abeele (2005), who motivate efficiency assessment within this setting by the argument that efficient research production is not guaranteed by the usual market correction mechanisms. These authors further claim that a cost efficiency evaluation model is particularly appropriate within this application context.…”

“…This application shows that the proposed methodology is easy to implement in practice, even for fairly large data sets (e.g., our application involved 229 observations). In fact, we recall from our discussion in Section 4.1 that exploiting scope economies entails a strengthened cost efficiency analysis as compared to more conventionally used alternatives, such as in Cherchye and Vanden Abeele (2005). [As we explain below, the efficiency evaluation can be strengthened further by putting additional structure on the decomposed input vectors and implicit price vectors.]…”