Evaluating Top Information Technology Firms in Standard and Poor's 500 index by Using a Multiple Objective Programming Based Data Envelopment Analysis

[[abstract]]Information technology (IT) is defined as the obtainment, procedure, storage and propagation of sounding, drawing, and textual information by combining microelectronics-based computing and telecommunications. Nowadays, IT is starting to spread further from the conventional personal computer and network technologies to integrations of other fields of technology such as the use of cell phones, televisions, automobiles, etc. In other words, IT has penetrated in daily life of human beings and become one part of the whole society. The importance of IT has become momentous. Therefore, to understand the performance of efficiency and productivity of the IT firms is critical for managers as well as for personal investors. Until now, there are very few researches tried to analyze final performance of the IT firms. As a result, this research intends to use traditional Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) CCR or BCC models to evaluate the performance of IT firms. The Decision Making Units (DMUs) on this research are chosen from IT firms in S&P 500. However, the traditional DEA models are not fair models from the aspect of improper weight derivations. Thus, this paper intends to analyze the efficiency of IT firms in S&P 500 efficiencies by using multiple objective programming (MOP) based Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). In a MOP based DEA approach, DMUs will be evaluated based on an equal standard and the results will be evaluated more fairly. The world’s leading IT firms in S&P 500 will be evaluated based on publicly available financial reports of the fiscal year 2010. In addition, the newly developed MOP can improve the traditional DEA’s unfair weights problems and benchmark the efficiency of IT firms in S&P 500 correctly. In the empirical study, the MOP based DEA demonstrated that F5 Networks should be the communications equipment companies of IT worthwhile to be invested. In the future, performance evaluation results can be served as foundations for investment strategies definition.