Corporate sustainability assessment based on rough-grey set theory

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to design an inference engine to measure the level of readiness of each bank before starting the corporate sustainability auditing process. Based on the output of the designed inference engine, the audition team can decide about the audition resources and the auditing process.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the hybrid rough and grey set theory are used to design and create a rule model system to measure the sustainability level of banks. First, 16 rule models are extracted using rough set theory (RST), and the cross-validation of each model is done. Then, the grey clustering is used to combine the same condition attributes and improve the validity of the final model. A total of 16 new rule models are extracted based on the decreased condition attributes, and the best model is selected based on the cross-validation results.FindingsBy comparing the accuracy of rough-gray’s rule models and as a result of decreasing the condition attributes, a proper increase in the accuracy of all models is obtained. Finally, the Naive/Genetic/object-related reducts model with 95.6% accuracy is selected as an inference engine to measure new banks’ readiness level.Originality/valueSustainability measurement of banks based on RST is a new approach in the field of corporate sustainability. Furthermore, using the grey clustering for combining the condition attributes is a novel solution for improving the accuracy of the rule models.