Performance assessment of public-funded R&D organizations working on similar research streams: A multinational study

The subject of deriving a measure of efficiency of public-funded organizations (primarily not-for-profit organizations) and of ranking these efficiency measures have been major subjects of debate and discussion. In the present study, the methodology of data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been used to analyze the relative performances of public funded R&D organizations across multiple countries working in similar research streams with multiple measures of inputs and outputs. The keywords highlighting the major research areas in the field of non-metrology conducted by National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in India were utilized to select the global comparators working in similar research streams. These global comparators were three R&D organizations located in the USA and one each located in Germany and Japan. The relative efficiencies of the organizations were assessed with variables such as external cash flow (ECF) earned, technologies transferred, publications and patents as outputs and grants received from the parent body and scientific personnel as inputs. The study indicates suggested measures and a set of targets to achieve the best possible performance for NPL and other R&D organizations.