Systems Analysis and Business Models

Abstract

As organizations are becoming more complex there is an increasing need to investigate already in the planning stage the results of a number of alternative policies. The construction of a model is thereby essential. It can be assumed that every employee has in mind some more or less vague notion which serves as a model of his company. These models are implicit, they are of little use to someone else. Explicit models fairly descriptive of company performance are now in frequent use as a tool for the policymaker. The idea of an integral business model, which includes many aspects of company activities, is certainly not new. In the Anglo-American literature one encounters the name ‘corporate model’ [8], [2], in the French literature ‘modèle global de l’enterprise’ [1].