PurposeThis work aims to propose an alternative method of human capital calculation for research laboratories of public university, taking into account some drawbacks of the methods currently applied in this field.Design/methodology/approachThis method is implemented via a linear program extracted from Data Envelopment Analysis based on slack movement. This is the formulation of Copper et al. (2000), which is used as the starting point for developing the proposed method through important transformations.FindingsThe proposed method is supported by an illustration related to a Moroccan public university. This illustration showed that 57 per cent of the laboratories and all the research activities that they perform are in deficit with respect to target scores.Research limitations/implicationsThe proposed method has technical limitations related to scores equal to 1 and to variables when those are numerous. To solve them, it is possible to use peer benchmarking system for the first limitation, and methods of regrouping the variables when those are numerous for the second limitation. Equally, the proposed method does not associate slack with important factors like governance and the impact analysis of research on innovation, competitiveness, and societal aspects. Likewise, it does not use the slack to measure individual efficiency at the same laboratory. Future research can fill these gaps.Practical implicationsThis work allows making appropriate budgetary and research policy within university, through budgeting process and management control by using raw and adjusted target values as well as actual ones. Also, the highlighting of the excessive slacks leads the university to take actions to reduce them, according to the most loss-making research activities.Originality/valueThe proposed method is original, since it fills a deficit in terms of human capital target values calculation and of the slack movement concept in relation to the efficient frontier. Additionally, it transforms the Data Envelopment Analysis program into a program that eliminates the slacks linked to the inputs, the radial movement related to the outputs and treats only the outputs and slacks related to these outputs.

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Ce papier traite du problème d’adaptation des instruments d’audit interne aux attributs structurels des collectivités territoriales marocaines. Fondée sur une étude empirique portant sur un échantillon de 81 communes marocaines, cette recherche a recours à la contingence configurationnelle qui transcende la contingence traditionnelle basée sur des associations bi-variées entre l’objet étudié et ses attributs. La contingence configurationnelle est mêlée à la contingence générique, l’une des bases du constructivisme générique qui est la posture épistémologique adoptée par le présent travail. Comme méthode opératoire de réalisation de cette recherche l’analyse des correspondances multiples est utilisée. Ses résultats montrent que tous les prototypes instrumentaux modelés selon les caractéristiques des collectivités territoriales portent en leur sein des gènes socioéconomiques.

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The alternative human capital evaluation method proposed is implemented via two methods: principal component analysis and discriminant analysis. The first method classifies the research laboratory activities in homogeneous clusters, while the second method standardizes their scores. The proposed method is sitting in the activity-based management principle, which favors physical indicators for measuring the targeted variables. It uses important concepts such as standardized target score of human capital and standardized mean difference which is usually employed in the area of meta-analysis. The proposed method has research implications as it enables to make appropriate budgetary policy within the laboratory concerned. It also has social implications in terms of distributive and procedural justice thanks to its scientific and objective nature.

This work aims to elaborate a governance composite index for research laboratories in public university. This index is composed by an indicator of responsible liberalism associating effectiveness and ethics, to which are added an organizational management indicator and a strategic management indicator. To achieve the above aim, several methods are used, such as adjusted data envelopment analysis and geometric mean to aggregate indicators to calculate the composite index, Vigier index to compute responsible liberalism indicator, and tools to measure the validity and the reliability of indicators. The findings show that the developed index can be applied in any context.

Usual efficiency evaluation methods, such as Data Envelopment Analysis and Stochastic Frontier Estimation tend to calculate efficiency scores which are valid only at a given moment and for the units where in the sample. At most, Malmquist index determines efficiency scores for period t+1. Those drawbacks can be avoided by translating efficiency scores in terms of probabilities trough the Discriminant Analysis which enables also, to provide appropriate weightings activities of research laboratories, object of this study. In addition to Discriminant Analysis, Hierarchical Cluster Analysis is used to classify those activities into homogeneous groups, while Data Envelopment Analysis is employed to categorize laboratories in efficient and inefficient structures. This method is applied on a public university in east of Morocco. This study shows that indexed publications as well as the supported doctoral thesis or in state of supervision have the greatest impact on efficiency of the research laboratories.

Purpose This study aims to highlight the negative effects of innovation with regard to innovation typologies and human, organizational, economic and societal variables in local authorities. Design/methodology/approach To achieve the above objective, radial basis function, based on Softmax activation function, and partitioning variable, is applied on a sample of Moroccan local authorities. Findings The findings show that the typologies of innovation that significantly impact the aforementioned variables are standard innovation/tailor-made innovation, social innovation/commercial innovation and incremental innovation/breakthrough innovation. They also reveal that the modalities considerably impacted by innovation are deviance in reaction, procedural injustice, increase of hidden costs and negative effect on ethics-culture. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is original in that it can contribute to the research in the field of innovation, as it deals with its negative effects in terms of typologies, which are rarely processed in innovation research. Additionally, to overcome these negative effects, this work uses neural networks that are very scarcely used in such studies on innovation.