The Centre’s research area is firmly within the Performance Measurement and Management (PMM) research Programme of the School. Indeed the Director of CEPMMA (Thanassoulis) is also the Director of the PMM Programme. So the centre in pursuing its research aims is contributing to the broader ABS research agenda. Members of the CEPMMA link with other members of the school providing either complementary technical expertise (e.g. deploying boundary methods researched in the centre to issues researched by others using central tendency methods odds, or providing new methods for looking at technical managerial issues (e.g. providing DEA or other quantitative approaches for assessing the effectiveness of marketing initiatives in maximising customer life value researched in collaboration with the marketing group.
The
hallmark of the research of the centre is that it is at the cutting
edge of theory yet it is often motivated through practical applications
and it is generally highly, applicable and hence the ability of the
centre to attract funding both for applied and theoretical research.
Sample theoretical developments contributed by members of the centre include:
- The incorporation of value
judgements in assessing performance through DEA (published in the
European Journal of Operational Research 3* journal)
- Various
models for assessing productivity change over time, including indices
valid for cost and profit functions, indices that are transitive and
indices that can be computed even when the data is negative. Papers
published in the Journal of the Operational Research Society, in the
European Journal of Operational Research and the Journal of
Productivity Analysis all 3* journals.
- DEA
models which link with models for multi-criteria programming, published
in the Journal of Productivity Analysis a 3* journal.
- Theoretical
results for biases in comparing groups of units on efficiency when the
groups are of different size, published in the Journal of the
Operational Research Society and the Journal of Productivity Analysis
both 3* journal
Sample applications include:
- The assessment of
productivity change in English and Welsh water utilities and the
components of efficiency and technical change (published in the
Journal of Productivity Analysis a 3* journal;
- The
development of a cost function for UK universities and the
investigation of alternative scenarios of expansion; due to appear in
(Studies in Higher Education).
- The use of
DEA and multi-level modelling in decomposing pupil, school and other
group-effects on the performance of secondary school pupils (in
preparation)
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