Sustainability assessment in the presence of undesirable factors over time: A case on gas companies

Sustainability is an essential ingredient for long-term success of firms, and its assessment has a significant impact on decision making and sustainability management. In the current paper, a data envelopment analysis-based approach is proposed to assess the sustainability of systems over several periods when undesirable outputs are present in the process. Indeed, sustainability is assessed in each period and, as a whole, simultaneously. Furthermore, social, economic, and environmental efficiency scores of multiperiod systems are evaluated in each period. The weak disposability assumption is used to handle undesirable outputs. Also, the current study concerns socio-economic, socioenvironmental, and eco-environmental factors in addition to economic, social, and environmental aspects. A real-world application on Iranian gas companies is used to illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach.