Parametric and non-parametric frontier applications are typical for measuring the efficiency and productivity of many healthcare units. Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, hospital efficiency is the center of academic discussions and the most desired target for many public authorities under limited resources. Investigating the state of the art of such applications and methodologies in the healthcare sector, besides uncovering strategical managerial prospects, can expand the scientific knowledge on the fundamental differences among efficiency models, variables and applications, drag research attention to the most attractive and recurrent concepts, and broaden a discussion on the specific theoretical and empirical gaps still to be addressed in future research agendas. This work offers a systematic bibliometric review to explore this complex panorama. Hospital efficiency applications from 1996 to 2022 were investigated from the Web of Science base. We selected 65 from the 203 most prominent works based on the Core Publication methodology. We provide core and general classifications according to the clinical outcome, bibliographic coupling of concepts and keywords highlighting the most relevant perspectives and literature gaps, and a comprehensive discussion of the most attractive literature and insights for building a research agenda in the field.

Digital competence plays an important role in higher education. The literature highlights the adoption and use of digital competence for the development of educational services in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), but it is still necessary to understand its influence on the innovative behavior of the public official. This study aims to investigate the influence of digital competence, based on the predictors’ infrastructure, integration, and digital management, on innovative work behaviors. The research was applied to 540 public employees of a Federal Institution of Higher Education (IFES) in northern Brazil. The response rate for this study was 33.5%. The Structural Equation Modeling approach by Partial Least Squares (PLS-SEM) was used. Empirical findings confirm that public employees with a high level of perception of digital competence more often develop challenging work to generate new innovative behaviors at work. This research was limited to investigating the influence of digital competence on innovative work behaviors of public employees of a Brazilian IFES. Future studies may address other contextual factors in this relationship. One of the practical implications is the need for managers in the education sector to support the construction of guidelines for educational and technological innovation to expand innovative behavior at work.

Purpose: The information technology (IT) outsourcing (ITO) decision is a key issue in strategic and operational management and is considered a main critical factor influencing successful organizational performance and technology assessment. The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework combining value-focused thinking (VFT) methodology and the FITradeoff method to support decisions regarding ITO.Design/methodology/approach: This study answers the following questions: How to identify, in a structured way, the objectives that should be considered in an ITO decision process in a changing environment? How to identify new IT services to be outsourced from the established objectives? The VFT method is recommended in this case to structure and model the problem. Moreover, the FITradeoff multicriteria method was considered in this study to support the evaluation and prioritization of IT services in an ITO decisionFindings: The framework provides promising results for ITO decisions. This study revealed that a lack of strategic and fundamental objectives is a critical issue in making ITO decisions. Although the VFT methodology is subjective in nature, it promotes a better understanding of goals and values, and FITradeoff allows the decision-maker to make comparisons of consequences based on his/her preferences.Research limitations/implications: The recommendations of the study are restricted to the case study and cannot be generalized. In addition, applying the method requires attention in determining the criteria used for outsourcing IT.Practical implications: The strategic analysis of ITO provides a holistic view of the current situation since (i) the VFT methodology enables the IT manager to generate new alternatives to assist future decisions and (ii) FITradeoff has been demonstrated as a suitable option to evaluate ITO decisions.Originality/value: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to utilize a problem structuring method (VFT) to identify criteria and alternatives based on the organizational values and objectives. This is integrated with a multicriteria method that uses partial information and may consequently lead to fewer inconsistencies (FITradeoff) in the context of ITO.