The performance of commercial banks based on a context-dependent range-adjusted measure model

Performance measures play an important role in assisting firms to identify the right business strategies and choose the best firms for benchmarking. The scope of conventional data envelopment analysis (DEA) is limited to performance improvement in the same context. A context-dependent range-adjusted measure (RAM) model is proposed for policy makers and bank managers to provide a reliable means of exploring operational performance in different evaluative contexts, taking into consideration negative and undesirable outputs. This empirical research utilizes three inputs and two outputs (a desirable one and an undesirable one) to measure the relative attractiveness and progress of 23 Taiwanese commercial banks in 2008. The results demonstrate the ranking of these banks based on their attractiveness and progress in different evaluative contexts, and indicate their respective market positions. The Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks test shows that there is a tendency to overestimate operational efficiency when banks neglect undesirable outputs. A managerial decision-making matrix is presented to analyze whether competitive strategies based on attractiveness and progress should be adopted by banks at levels 2 and 3.