Investigating infrastructure, superstructure, operating and financial efficiency in the management of Turkish seaports using data envelopment analysis

•Turkish seaports perform weak efficiency in spite of its geographical advantages.•Four types of efficiency were determined; infrastructure, superstructure, operating and financial.•Low labor productivity and high expenses are the major source of inefficiency.•Public seaports are superior in infrastructure while private seaports are superior in superstructure, operating and financial efficiency.•Private seaports suffer from inappropriate scale size while public seaports suffer from managerial incompetency.

The purpose of this study is to measure the management performance of thirteen Turkish seaports by undertaking the simultaneous investigation of four dimensions of management performance, namely, infrastructure, superstructure, operating and financial efficiencies. Based on their pure technical and scale efficiency scores, short and long term managerial implications were provided. Results show that low labor productivity and high expenses are the major sources of inefficiency of Turkish seaports. Public seaports exhibit better performance in infrastructure efficiency, whereas private seaports are superior in superstructure, operating and financial efficiency. While private seaports suffer from inappropriate scale size, public seaports suffer from managerial incompetency.