ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE EVALUATION IN BRAZILIAN AGRIBUSINESS: A DEA APPLICATION IN THE PAPER AND CELLULOSE SECTOR

Abstract

Agribusiness is one of the most important sectors in the Brazilian economy and its industrial segment has performed an increasingly significant role. Due to this relevance, technical and management issues concerning the segment requires closer attention. This article attempts to provide a comprehensive discussion of the organizational performance of Brazilian, paper and cellulose companies with accounting and financial information as a reference point. By applying Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), we sought to identify a multi-criteria performance index for each company and to provide a benchmark analysis that would show what inefficient companies should do to become efficient. The results showed that better ranked companies were those that were most successful at mixing its inputs (the lowest, the best indexes) in the search of outputs (the greatest, the best indexes). Further, the worst ranked companies were those that required profound changes in its input and/or output levels in order to reach the maximum performance.