A DEA-Based Decision Support Framework for Organizations' Performance Evaluation considering TQM and Knowledge Management.

Total quality management (TQM) and knowledge management (KM) play a significant role in improving the situation of the organization and creating and maintaining competitive advantage (CA). Therefore, harmonizing TQM and KM with the organizational goals and performance leads to the organization's greater capabilities. The current paper presents a decision support framework to evaluate the performance of organizations based on the success factors (SFs) of TQM and KM using the BCC model of data envelopment analysis (DEA). The SFs of KM are considered as input and the SFs of TQM are considered as output of the BCC model, and the efficiency scores of five pharmaceutical companies in Esfahan, Iran, are obtained. The results show that, among the aforementioned companies, three companies were recognized as efficient, while two of them were introduced as inefficient companies. Furthermore, in order to provide more recommendations for the managers of these companies, two area charts according to SFs of TQM and KM were drawn, and the results were analyzed and discussed.