Ranking of DMUs with interval cross-efficiencies based on absolute dominance

This paper follows an alternative approach for ranking decision-making units (DMUs) based upon cross-efficiency evaluation in data envelopment analysis (DEA). The approach determines the DMUs' peer-evaluation efficiencies with interval numbers and derives an interval cross-efficiency matrix (CEM), avoiding the need to make a choice of weights according to a specific secondary goal among various alternatives for the decision makers. Absolute dominance is defined to deal with the DMUs with interval efficiencies in the interval CEM. The ranking for all the DMUs is based upon the overall absolute dominance values and any preference information of decision makers are not needed. A numerical example of five enterprise self-innovation projects selection is used for illustration. We also apply the method to performance ranking of 30 National Basketball Association (NBA) teams as a real application and the results show that the western conference has better performance and the southwest division has the best division performance in the 2012-13 regular season.