Evaluation On Efficiency Of China’s Listed Software Companies Based On DEA

Since the21st century, the rapid development of information technology represented byelectronic technology and computer technology has hugely changed the world. Withoutexception, the national economy and social life have also experienced unprecedentedly greatimprovement. Information industry is becoming the main driver advancing the worldeconomic. Therefore, as the core and soul of information industry, software industry hasmanifested its indispensable importance. However, as both the economic marketization andinternationalization of our country are increasingly enhanced, software enterprises are havingto face fiercer competition. What’s worse, most software products have some fataldisadvantages, such as the short life cycle, the low copy cost and the high customerconversion cost. Consequently, the operating efficiency of software enterprises shows its greatsignificance. And how to raise the production efficiency of software products becomes aproblem needing urgent solution.However, there is few research papers devoting to answer the questions concerningChinese software companies, such as how to exactly gain the information about theiroperating efficiency and which factors affect and restrict their operating performance. Theexisting researches mostly adopt a macro perspective and make use of the traditional DEAmodel to evaluate the operating efficiency of the whole software industry. As a result, there islittle literature contributing to evaluate the efficiency of software companies and the less forthe studies of influence factors relating to the operating efficiency of listed softwarecorporations.This paper takes the29listed software companies selected from Shanghai and Shenzhenas its research objects. Based on the data from2008to2011, the paper firstly uses traditionalDEA model to measure and analyze the relative operating efficiency of all sample companies.After that, the Super-efficiency DEA model is utilized to rank and compare the DEA-efficientareas. Secondly, the malmqusit index method is adopted to dynamically analyze the totalfactor productivity of China’s software industry among2008-2011years. Finally, theDEA-Tobit two stage model is exploited to make empirical research about three factors’impacts on companies’ operating efficiency. The three factors are the technological innovation,the concentration of ownership and the enterprise scale. The research outputs show that the overall input-output efficiency of China listed software companies is not high and mostinefficient software companies have, to different extents, some input redundancy and outputdeficiency. On the whole, the average TFP of the whole software industry experiences agrowth leap during the study period, which is mainly benefited from the progress andinnovation of production technology. What’s more, it is found that R&D funding intensityconsiderably boosts company operating efficiency, while R&D staff intensity has nosignificant effect. Besides, the relative concentration of ownership (equity moderateconcentration and as well as a good balance of ownership) gives an obviously positive impacton company operating efficiency and meanwhile firm size does, to a certain extent, stimulateit positively. Finally, we put forward some policy recommendations in accordance with theabove analysis, such as paying attention to technology innovation so as to increase theefficiency of resource transformation; optimizing the allocation of resources to strengthen theorganization management; enlarging scientific research investment and giving priority topersonnel training.