Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a well-known approach to measuring operations performance of decision-making units (DMUs). Moreover, the balanced scorecard (BSC) is a methodology for strategic planning of organizations and measuring their internal performance. DEA generally uses quantity measures, whereas BSC applies quality measures. In the real world, DMUs usually have complex structures
... [Show full abstract] such as multi-level or hierarchical structures. In these structures, there are multiple levels and each level utilizes inputs to produce outputs separately, where the outputs of the previous level are the inputs to the next level. In the present paper, we apply BSC to the design of a multi-level structure. BSC encompasses the four perspectives of finance, customers, internal processes, and learning & growth. Furthermore, we apply DEA to multi-stage or hierarchical structures based on BSC. For this purpose, two different approaches, the cooperative model versus the multi-objective model, are proposed. Cooperative models such as bargaining games are game theoretic approaches to evaluate DMUs. In this paper, the DEA-game model uses the bargaining concept to link perspectives in BSC, while each perspective is considered separately as an objective in the multi-objective DEA model. In addition, two approaches are compared based on the related results. We also employ data on Iranian cement companies to show the different capabilities of each approach. Our findings demonstrate that the DEA-game model is capable of differentiating the cement companies from each other more effectively.