Ecoefficiency: How Data Envelopment Analysis Can be Used by Managers and Researchers

Joseph Sarkis

Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing, Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 4193, edited by S. Gupta, pp. 194-203, 2001 .

Ecoefficiency is critical for organizations that seek to be both environmentally conscious and profitable. Ecoefficiency supports and aids in determining "win-win" strategies for organizations. Studying and managing organizations from this perspective requires an evaluation of ecoefficiency. To aid researchers and managers develop measures for ecoefficiency we review the use of data envelopment analysis (DEA) for this purpose. DEA theory and application have gone through major growth. Yet, its use as a tool for environmental performance evaluation has been limited. In this paper we provide a number of DEA models and some extensions and how they can be utilized from both the practitioner and researcher perspective. An illustrative example from published data helps to gain insight into the various models, their capabilities and limitations

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