IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/mgtdec/v37y2016i8p515-529.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimal Strategy and Business Models: A Control Theory Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Johnson
  • Nicolai J. Foss

Abstract

This study picks up on earlier suggestions that control theory may further the study of strategy. Strategy can be formally interpreted as an idealized path optimizing heterogeneous resource deployment to produce maximum financial gain. Using standard matrix methods to describe the firm Hamiltonian, it is possible to formalize useful notions of a business model, resources, and competitive advantage. The business model that underpins strategy may be seen as a set of constraints on resources that can be interpreted as controls in optimal control theory. Strategy then might be considered to be the control variable of firm path, suggesting in turn that the firm's business model is the codification of the application of investment resources used to control the strategic path of value realization. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Johnson & Nicolai J. Foss, 2016. "Optimal Strategy and Business Models: A Control Theory Approach," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(8), pages 515-529, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:mgtdec:v:37:y:2016:i:8:p:515-529
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2022. "Competitive Advantage," OSF Preprints fcsj8, Center for Open Science.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:mgtdec:v:37:y:2016:i:8:p:515-529. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/7976 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.