Paul Rouse

• PhD
• University of Auckland at University of Auckland

This paper surveys the growing stream of DEA research that uses only accounting measures, which we term “FinDEA”. Our analysis of 280 FinDEA studies from 1990 to 2023, identified 322 models using a diversity of firm performance constructs and accounting measures. The breadth of firm performance, nature and variety of accounting measures, and approa...

Purpose Recent accounting research using data envelopment analysis (DEA) measures firm performance using accounting measures from annual reports, which are readily available from electronic databases (e.g. Demerjian et al. , 2013; Schwab, 2022). This approach differs from conventional DEA studies that analyse productivity and use internal data abou...

Due to the increasing availability of large-scale digitalized databases containing summarized financial accounting measures, a growing number of DEA models are using these variables. Where only accounting measures are used, we term these “FinDEA” models. Accounting measures are subject to accounting choices regarding recognition and measurement, wh...

Objectives This study aims to explore the opinions of key health leaders in Aotearoa New Zealand (Waikato Region) regarding a proposed facility-based rehabilitation initiative for older people. The initiative involves a team of health professionals providing intensive rehabilitation up to four times a day, seven days a week, to patients transferred...

Objectives Current policies for older patients do not adequately address the barriers to effective implementation of optimal care models in New Zealand, partly due to differences in patient definitions and the in-patient pathway they should follow through hospital. This research aims to: (a) synthesise a definition of a complex older patient; (b) i...

Due to the increasing availability of large-scale digitalized databases containing summarised financial accounting measures, a growing number of DEA models are using these variables. Where only accounting measures are used, we term these "FinDEA" models. Accounting measures are subject to accounting choices regarding recognition and measurement, wh...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models give each decision making unit freedom to assign values to the input-output weights maximising its efficiency score. However, there is no guarantee that the optimal weights obtained from a DEA model are always positive which poses a problem, in both theory and practice. This paper offers new linear programming...

Cook et al. (Oper Res 61(3):666–676, 2013) propose a DEA-based model for the performance evaluation of non-homogeneous decision making units (DMUs) based on constant returns to scale (CRS), extended by Li et al. (Health Care Manag Sci 22(2):215–228, 2019) to variable returns to scale (VRS). This paper locates these models into more general DDF mode...

Unlabelled: Meeting the needs of acute geriatric patients is often challenging, and although evidence shows that older patients need tailored care, it is still unclear which interventions are most appropriate. The objective of this study is to systematically evaluate the hospital-wide acute geriatric models compared with conventional pathways. The...

This study aims to develop a statistical model to detect both high and low outlier cases in terms of diagnosis-related group (DRG) distributions. A data set containing five DRGs with 458 patient cases was selected for the study. The distributions of DRG cost and length of stay (LOS) are examined firstly, and all the distributions of DRG costs are l...

Mark Twain once said, “Age is an issue of mind over matter (…) If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter…” However, the gradual impairment of biological functions due to deteriorative cell and structural component alterations over time is inevitable. The United Nations reports that “by mid-century, one in six people globally will be aged 65 years or old...

Internationally, Home Care is invariably funded through fee-per-service, e.g., if an hour of care is delivered, the provider receives an associated amount of funding. However, the funding model discourages reductions in packages-of-care when a client’s functional capacity improves, and further disincentivises providers to discharge clients. Similar...

Case weights capture the resource cost by diagnosis‐related group (DRG) but may not fully reflect the complexity of the clinical services provided. This study describes the use of a work complexity index (WCI), for assessing acute care services focusing on those provided by physicians in healthcare systems. The services are classified using relativ...

Benchmarking has been adopted by private organisations in search of commercial efficiency gains and public sector organisations in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and accountability. One such sector that has considerable potential to benefit from benchmarking is the transport sector. Focusing on the pavement management of road networks, this pap...

This study aims to develop a performance evaluation system that can facilitate performance evaluation at region, hospital, and department levels to enable better cost management for sustainable development. A multi-level system of performance evaluation informs a hierarchical assessment of cost management from regions to hospitals to departments us...

Radiotherapy treatment (RT) irradiates a patient's tumour volume while minimising damage to healthy tissue and surrounding critical organs at risk (OAR). In the conventional RT planning process, the RT planner has to iteratively adjust either the planning objectives (tumour or OAR dose levels) or the weights of the planning objectives until an acce...

Objectives: The study sought to determine whether older people, on discharge from hospital and on referral to a supported discharge team (SDT), will have: (1) reduced length of stay in hospital; (2) reduced risk of hospital readmission; and (3) reduced healthcare costs. Design/intervention: Randomized controlled trial with follow-up at 4 and 12...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a non-parametric, optimisation-based benchmarking technique first introduced by Charnes et al. (European Journal of Operational Research, 2(6), pp. 429–444, 1978), later extended by Banker et al. (Management Science 30(9), pp. 1078–1092, 1984), with many variations of DEA models proposed since. DEA measures the pr...

In this paper, we develop a computational procedure for the hyperbolic distance function (HDF) within the nonparametric framework of data envelopment analysis. We convert the nonlinear HDF model under variable returns to scale into an equivalent conic optimization problem with linear constraints plus a “toppled ice cream” cone constraint that can b...

Two fundamental goals of health systems are to maximise overall population health gain (referred to as efficiency) and to minimise unfair health inequalities (equity). Often there is a trade-off in maximising efficiency vis a vis equity and the relative weight given to one goal over the other is acknowledged to be essentially a value judgement. Hea...

Since the 1990s, Public–Private Partnerships (P3s) have become a widely used public infrastructure financing policy tool. However, there is a vast body of evidence suggesting that they do not consistently deliver superior Value-for-Money (VfM), a central argument for engaging private industry partners. In response to the call by Andon (2012), we in...

Background: Socially assistive robots are being developed for patients to help manage chronic health conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Adherence to medication and availability of rehabilitation are suboptimal in this patient group, which increases the risk of hospitalization. Objective: This pilot study aimed to in...

Objectives: This study aims to describe the impact of a mental health assertive community treatment prison model of care (PMOC) on improving the ability to identify prisoner needs, provide interventions and monitor their efficacy. Methods: We carried out a file review across five prisons of referrals in the year before the implementation of the...

Worldwide increases in the numbers of older people alongside an accompanying international policy incentive to support ageing-in-place have focussed the importance of home-care services as an alternative to institutionalisation. Despite this, funding models that facilitate a responsive, flexible approach are lacking. Casemix provides one solution,...

Background: Supported Discharge Teams aim to help with the transition from hospital to home, whilst reducing hospital length-of-stay. Despite their obvious attraction, the evidence remains mixed, ranging from strong support for diseasespecific interventions to less favourable results for generic services. Objective: To determine whether older peopl...

Service providers and funders need ways to work together to improve services. Identifying critical performance variables provides a mechanism by which funders can understand what they are purchasing without getting caught up in restrictive service specifications that restrict the ability of service providers to meet the needs of the clients. An imp...

Background: Supported Discharge Teams aim to help with the transition from hospital to home, whilst reducing hospital length-of-stay. Despite their obvious attraction, the evidence remains mixed, ranging from strong support for disease-specific interventions to less favourable results for generic services. Objective: To determine whether older p...

Weak disposability based models of environmental technologies typically assume equiproportionate trade-offs between desired and undesired outputs. We postulate a generalised version of weak disposability allowing for different types of trade-offs between good and bad outputs and derive a new technology called piecewise Cobb-Douglas environmental te...

Purpose The operations research method of data envelopment analysis (DEA) shows promise for assessing radiotherapy treatment plan quality. In this paper we consider the technical requirements for using DEA for plan assessment. Design/methodology/approach Forty-one prostate treatment plans were retrospectively analyzed using the DEA method. We in...

Background Radical prostatectomy is the most common treatment for localised prostate cancer in New Zealand. Active surveillance was introduced to prevent overtreatment and reduce costs while preserving the option of radical prostatectomy. This study aims to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of active surveillance compared to watchful waiting and radi...

INTRODUCTION: Outreach Immunisation Services (OIS) enable children who have not been immunised on time at general practice to be immunised in the community, thereby improving immunisation coverage and reducing equity gaps. AIM: To identify the most effective service delivery models and make recommendations for more effective and cost-efficient OIS...

Objective: Use data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure the efficiency of New Zealand's District Health Boards (DHBs) at achieving gains in Māori and European life expectancy (LE). Methods: Using life tables for 2006 and 2013, a two-output DEA model established the production possibility frontier for Māori and European LE gain. Confidence limi...

Purpose Paying too much for funding or failing to obtain adequate returns for lending and interest-bearing assets because of inappropriate mix is just as much a source of inefficiency in banking as overutilisation of input resources. The purpose of this research is to examine bank performance in terms of both technical and allocative efficiency....

This chapter considers the use of accounting information in DEA. We examine some of the advantages and pitfalls of using this type of information in DEA models. We also discuss some typical accounting measures used in DEA and suggest three models using publicly available accounting information. The chapter also examines how DEA can be used in conju...

As revenue management (RM) techniques evolve there is a need to take stock of how organizations practice RM and the interactions among techniques. This would help practitioners and researchers better understand how RM practice is influenced by the business setting, including those not traditionally associated with advanced RM techniques. Also, it w...

Färe, Grosskopf, and Lovell (1985) merged Farrell’s input and output oriented technical efficiency measures into a new graph-type approach known as hyperbolic distance function (HDF). In spite of its appealing special structure in allowing for the simultaneous and equiproportionate reduction in inputs and increase in outputs, HDF is a non-linear op...

Case study evidence from a large industrial firm is analysed with the purpose of constructing a new conceptual model of the influences that drive companies towards sustainability, and showing the advantages of integrating sustainability reporting with management control systems, specifically the balanced scorecard. The new conceptual model suggests...

In the MCS literature, accounting control frameworks and the concept of the control package offer different views on the components comprising control systems but little guidance for assessing the completeness of the systems or the effectiveness of the control being delivered. This paper draws on two cybernetic tools, namely the Viable System Model...

Background: The high prevalence of serious mental illness (SMI) in prisons remains a challenge for mental health services. Many prisoners with SMI do not receive care. Screening tools have been developed but better detection has not translated to higher rates of treatment. In New Zealand a Prison Model of Care (PMOC) was developed by forensic ment...

Purpose – This paper aims to examine how three different organisations integrate sustainability reporting into management control systems (MCS). Design/methodology/approach – A case study examination of sustainability reporting integrated into MCS in three New Zealand organisations. Findings – The integration of sustainability reporting into MCS...

To assess the effect of telecare on health related quality of life, self-care, hospital use, costs and the experiences of patients, informal carers and health care professionals. Patients were randomly assigned either to usual care or to additionally entering their data into a commercially-available electronic device that uploaded data once a day t...

ABSTRACT This review, based on published papers, aims to describe the costs of prostate cancer screening and to examine whether prostate cancer screening is cost effective. The estimated cost per cancer detected ranged from €1299 in The Netherlands to US$44,355 in the USA. The estimated cost per life-year saved ranged from US$3000 to US$729,000, wh...

Background It is well recognised that prisoners with serious mental illness (SMI) are at high risk of poor outcomes on return to the community. Early engagement with mental health services and other community agencies could provide the substrate for reducing risk.AimTo evaluate the impact of implementing an assertive community treatment informed pr...

Governments worldwide face the challenges of an ageing population. New models of health services are being established to support older people to continue living in their homes with timely access to quality health services. Health care provision for older people, however, involves multiple stakeholders, who represent different views on health care,...

Purpose – Much health service delivery occurs within a network structure, with co-operation and competition coexisting. Leading change for successful outcomes is a difficult task even outside of this multi-layered complex context, with reports that up to two-thirds of change processes are unsuccessfully implemented. This can have a major impact on...

Screening for prostate cancer (PCa) using the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test is widespread in New Zealand.Aim.This study estimates the costs of identifying a new case of PCa by screening asymptomatic men. Men aged 40+, who had PSA tests in 31 general practices in the Midland Cancer Network region during 2010, were identified. Asymptomatic men...

Data envelopment analysis (DEA), as originally proposed, is a methodology for evaluating the relative efficiencies of a set of homogeneous decision-making units (DMUs) in the sense that each uses the same input and output measures (in varying amounts from one DMU to another). In some situations, however, the assumption of homogeneity among DMUs may...

Objective: To determine the impact of a restorative model of home care on social support and physical function among community-dwelling older people. Design: Cluster-randomized controlled trial. Setting: Home care in an urban area. Participants: Participants (N=205) were randomly assigned to an intervention group (n=108; mean age, 79.1y; 71....

Increasing the level of school competition has been suggested as a way to improve school performance. This study examines one of the most extreme examples of such reform using data from New Zealand public high schools. In the 1990s school zoning was abolished in New Zealand and public schools competed for students, not just with private schools, bu...

Recent management control research considers how performance management systems (PMS), conceptualized as packages of controls with competing objectives, operate in an integrated fashion. Larger organisations must also consider how to achieve integration across organizational levels. It is not clear from traditional accounting-based frameworks how t...

Business profitability is a complex topic requiring joint identification and management of the underlying drivers of revenue and cost. Researchers have examined a diverse range of drivers using a range of research approaches to explore the effects of business actions on profitability. Despite a considerable body of literature which studies drivers,...

Accountability and management accounting have strong links, especially around performance reporting. Many approaches, such as the balanced scorecard and Ramanathan’s (1985) accountability framework, stem from management accounting research and practice. Accountability and performance measurement are linked inextricably; in fact, the interpretation...

Special Issue Editors: Vincent Charles, Rolf Fare and Joe Zhu Foreword: Business Performance Management is a term that became widely used in the 1970s. The term represents a set of activities that assist the management of any organization to manage its resources and achieve its goals in an effective and efficient manner. Basically, it is a popular...

Data envelopment analysis (DEA), as originally proposed by Charnes et al. (1978) viewed the efficiency measurement problem as one wherein each of a set of DMUs uses the same input and output measures, albeit in amounts that vary from one DMU to another. In some situations, however, the assumption that all DMUs use the same measures may fail. While...

Non-discretionary or environmental variables are regarded as important in the evaluation of efficiency in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), but there is no consensus on the correct treatment of these variables. This paper compares the performance of the standard BCC model as a base case with two single-stage models: the Banker and Morey (1986a) mode...

In 2010, Waitemata District Health Board piloted a new model of care for total hip and knee arthroplasties. The pilot was incentive based and clinically led. The participating surgeons and anaesthetists were responsible for increasing surgical throughput. The pilot aimed to increase productivity, reduce cost and increase quality for patients. To co...

Multiplier weights in DEA are obtained by solving any one of several multiplier linear programs (LPs). These weights are a fundamental aspect of DEA and have many uses and interpretations including determining marginal rates of substitution. Obtaining usable values from multiplier weights can be problematic due to the way DEA LPs are formulated and...

The modern corporation is characterised by widely dispersed shareholdings and professional managers who run the organisation but typically own a small portion of the shares. This type of situation is conducive to agency problems. Efficient governance structures can mitigate these agency problems and enhance the performance of firms. This paper exam...

Activity-based costing (ABC) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) share similar views of resource consumption in the production of outputs. While DEA has a high level focus typically using aggregated data in the form of inputs and outputs, ABC is more detailed and oriented around very disaggregated data. We use a case study of immunisation activitie...

Health services delivered in an older person's home are often implemented at a critical juncture in an individual's functional status. Although homecare has potential to improve this situation, it often focuses on treating disease and 'taking care' of the patient rather than promoting independence. The aim of restorative homecare is to change the p...

This paper describes a productivity method, data envelopment analysis (DEA), and how it can be used to measure performance using multiple performance measures. DEA compares organisations or parts of organisations that share common goals and use similar resources to produce similar products, and calculates the technical efficiency with which firms c...

To develop a classification of tertiary cardiac DRGs in order to investigate differences in tertiary/secondary product mix across New Zealand district health boards (DHBs). 67 DRGs from 85,442 cardiac cases were analysed using cost weights and patient comorbidity complexity levels, which were used as a proxy for complexity. The research found high...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the holistic nature of control systems to understand how they operate across organizational levels and manage change. Design/methodology/approach This paper takes an analytical approach using the viable system model (VSM) to assess the two main frameworks of control reported in the accounting lit...

Childhood immunisation is one of the most cost-effective activities in health care. However, New Zealand (NZ) has failed to achieve national coverage targets. NZ general practice is the primary site of service delivery and is funded on a fee-for-service basis for delivery of immunisation events. To determine the average cost to a general practice o...

This paper focuses on local road aspects of the highway system and aims to assess how efficiently, effectively and economically the 73 Territorial Local Authorities (TLAs) in New Zealand have maintained their respective local road networks from a life cycle perspective. Measures of quality, quantity and cost, together with nondiscretionary measures...

We develop a model of audit production based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) using labor cost as input and hours spent on evidence-gathering activities that determine the level of assurance as output. Client characteristics are considered exogenous factors that affect audit production as a whole. We apply the model to a sample of U.S.-based enga...

The New Zealand public health sector has used DEA since 1997 to identify efficient expenditure levels to set prices for hospital services at the DRG level. Given the size of the expenditure (NZ$ 2.6 billion), considerable robustness was required for the results and sophistication of the models/process. While the model development and application ap...

Evaluating the effects of a change in public policy setting is a critical element in the chain of accountability. Factors such as effectiveness and efficiency in government operations are often difficult to measure. In this study of efficiency outcomes, we follow events before and after significant structural change arising from local authority ama...

A performance framework is described that distils concepts from the literature about existing frameworks in order to extend capacity to evaluate and appraise performance. This open system interpretation recognises dynamic flows between various organizational levels and allows performance to be viewed in a holistic sense. Both macro and micro views...

Website databases provide the opportunity to fundamentally change the way research and knowledge are advanced and disseminated. This paper describes a website, http://www.etm.pdx.edu/dea/dataset/, focused on Data Envelopment Analysis and DEA researchers.

DEA super-efficiency models were introduced originally with the objective of providing a tie-breaking procedure for ranking units rated as efficient in conventional DEA models. This objective has been expanded to include sensitivity analysis, outlier identification and inter-temporal analysis. However, not all units rated as efficient in convention...

This paper describes the development and application over a 4-year period of a performance monitoring system based upon mathematical programming methods. The setting is the engineering services division of an international airline. An integrated performance measurement system is developed that extends the balanced scorecard into an holistic apprais...

This case examines capital budgeting issues related to the construction and operation of a marina. The case requires students to identify the relevant cash flows and discount these to establish a net present value for the investment. Issues addressed through the case include incorporating inflation into cash flows and the choice of appropriate disc...

As infrastructure ages, the maintenance cost of highways is becoming a major international concern that hitherto has been overlooked by public sector researchers. This paper begins to fill this gap by focusing on the nature and extent of the impact of environmental cost drivers on costs of highway maintenance. By linking a cost driver framework wit...

In 1989 several hundred New Zealand local government authorities were amalgamated into less than one hundred larger entities. The interest in this research is on determining pre- and post-amalgamation performance focusing on highway maintenance activities. Data Envelopment Analysis is used to measure performance, which is decomposed using Malmquist...

This paper describes the application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to a highway maintenance setting, using measures of inputs, outputs and outcomes reported by New Zealand local authorities. A general framework of performance measurement is developed and illustrated through application to the highway setting. The framework encompasses a perfor...

This paper examines the nature of executory contracts using as examples forward exchange contracts, asset purchase commitments and leases. FECs are paid particular attention as they have not previously been the focus of discussions concerning executory contracts. The arguments in the literature for recognition of wholly executory contracts can be s...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed description of constructing a Monte Carlo simulation in a spreadsheet context. The examples used are from cost-volume-profit analysis, but the methods can be applied equally to capital budgeting or any other exercise involving a Monte Carlo simulation. Both empirical and theoretical distributions a...

There is a need to manage the use of natural resources to ensure their ongoing profitability and sustainability. The use of farm land provides an illustration of some of the complexities involved. This paper reports a study of two major dairy regions in New Zealand and reports technical and scale efficiencies of dairy farms using DEA. We illustrate...

The New Zealand education system underwent a number of fundamental reforms at the beginning of the 1990s that effectively changed the governance structures of New Zealand state schools. These reforms provide an opportunity to examine the effect of increased levels of autonomy and accountability on the performance of schools. As part of a longer-ter...

1. Background Under the prevailing conditions of financial stringency and competitive pressure, the analysis of many highway service decisions warrants multi-disciplinary col-laboration between highway engineers and management accountants on issues of investment, performance analysis as well as cost and productivity measurement. This chapter aims t...

Restricted Item. Print thesis available in the University of Auckland Library or may be available through Inter-Library Loan. Restricted Item. Print thesis available in the University of Auckland Library or may be available through Inter-Library Loan. The subject of this dissertation is performance measurement and the development of a methodologica...