A new approach is supplied for locating efficiency frontiers and evaluating the efficiency of Decision Making Units (DMU's). This is accomplished from observational data by means of an envelopment procedure called DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) originally developed by Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes...

In management contexts, mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best. In this capacity, mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management. Data Envelopment Analysis reverses this...

This paper compares inferences about hospital cost and production correspondences from two different estimation models: (1) the econometric modeling of the translog cost function, and (2) the application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). While there are numerous examples of the application of...

This paper provides a formal statistical basis for the efficiency evaluation techniques of data envelopment analysis (DEA). DEA estimators of the best practice monotone increasing and concave production function are shown to be also maximum likelihood estimators if the deviation of actual output...

The cost of maintaining application software has been rapidly escalating, and is currently estimated to comprise from 50--80% of corporate information systems department budgets. In this research we develop an estimable production frontier model of software maintenance, using a new methodology...

The development of the information systems (IS) literature in Management Science during the past 50 years reflects the inception, growth, and maturation of several different research streams. The five research streams we identify incorporate different definitions of the managerial problems that...

Software maintenance claims a large proportion of organizational resources. It is thought that many maintenance problems derive from inadequate software design and development practices. Poor design choices can result in complex software that is costly to support and difficult to change....

Software maintenance is a major concern for organizations. Productivity gains in software maintenance can enable redeployment of Information Systems resources to other activities. Thus, it is important to understand how software maintenance productivity can be improved. In this study, we...

In recent years, the practitioner literature in operations management has seen a dramatic surge in articles on quality management. It reflects the increased emphasis on quality by U.S. firms, which has been attributed largely to increased competition faced by them. The question of how quality is...

Erratum to: "Piecewise Loglinear Estimation of Efficient Production Surfaces", Management Sci. 32 (1, January) (1986) 126--135.