Organisation flexibility, efficiency, and sustainable long-term performance: an application of data envelopment analysis and relative variety analysis

The purpose of this study was to investigate the most important determinants of an organisation's sustainable long-term performance. We employed two models together, the data envelopment analysis (DEA) and the relative variety analysis (RVA). DEA was used as the measurement of efficiency. Furthermore, RVA was used to measure flexibility. We tested the main hypotheses in this study using ordinary least square estimation with the consideration of any confounding effect. This study showed that neither organisation efficiency nor organisation flexibility alone cannot explain the variation in long-term performance alone. Furthermore, the results displayed the necessity of combining the organisation efficiency with organisation flexibility together in order to explain the variety of the organisation's long-term performance. Moreover, this study highlighted the importance of flexibility and efficiency in achieving a sustainable long-term performance. In addition, this study contributes to the literature by using recent practical tools like the RVA applied on a real-life data.