How do Market Concentration and Mimetic Behavior Influence Strategic Renewal?

In the increasingly dynamic and competitive business environment of today, incumbent firms are facing rapid and profound changes in macro social, economic, political and technological conditions. Such a turbulent setting may disrupt the inertia of the incumbent firms, from a wide range of industries, and urge them to make drastic and often irreversible strategic decisions. Such vital strategic decisions include strategic renewal which, as the literature sustains, is a necessary requirement to remain competitive, but difficult to achieve. This paper aims to develop understanding on major areas of strategic renewal from the point of view of some aspects of the institutional environment. Its goal is to establish the relationship between different market conditions and the way companies react in terms of strategic renewal and change. Moreover it statistically investigates the degree to which companies decide to “run” in their own rhythm or just imitate other incumbent companies in the industry.strategic renewal, mimetic behavior, market concentration, exploitation, exploration.

The linear quadratic regulator problem for a class of controlled systems modeled by singularly perturbed Ito differential equations

This paper discusses an infinite-horizon linear quadratic (LQ) optimal control problem involving state- and control-dependent noise in singularly perturbed stochastic systems. First, an asymptotic structure along with a stabilizing solution for the stochastic algebraic Riccati equation (ARE) are newly established. It is shown that the dominant part of this solution can be obtained by solving a parameter-independent system of coupled Riccati-type equations. Moreover, sufficient conditions for the existence of the stabilizing solution to the problem are given. A new sequential numerical algorithm for solving the reduced-order AREs is also described. Based on the asymptotic behavior of the ARE, a class of O(√ε) approximate controller that stabilizes the system is obtained. Unlike the existing results in singularly perturbed deterministic systems, it is noteworthy that the resulting controller achieves an O(ε) approximation to the optimal cost of the original LQ optimal control problem. As a result, the proposed control methodology can be applied to practical applications even if the value of the small parameter ε is not precisely known. © 2012 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.Vasile Dragan, Hiroaki Mukaidani and Peng Sh

On control of discrete-time state-dependent jump linear systems with probabilistic constraints: A receding horizon approach

In this article, we consider a receding horizon control of discrete-time state-dependent jump linear systems, particular kind of stochastic switching systems, subject to possibly unbounded random disturbances and probabilistic state constraints. Due to a nature of the dynamical system and the constraints, we consider a one-step receding horizon. Using inverse cumulative distribution function, we convert the probabilistic state constraints to deterministic constraints, and obtain a tractable deterministic receding horizon control problem. We consider the receding control law to have a linear state-feedback and an admissible offset term. We ensure mean square boundedness of the state variable via solving linear matrix inequalities off-line, and solve the receding horizon control problem on-line with control offset terms. We illustrate the overall approach applied on a macroeconomic system

Nonlinear differential equations of Riccati type on ordered Banach spaces

In this paper we consider a general class of time-varying nonlinear differential equations on infinite dimensional ordered Banach spaces, which includes as special cases many known differential Riccati equations of optimal control. Using a linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) approach we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of some global solutions such as maximal, stabilizing and minimal solutions for this class of generalized Riccati equations. The obtained results extend to infinite dimensions and unify corresponding results in the literature. They provide useful tools for solving infinite-time linear quadratic (LQ) control problems for linear differential systems affected by countably-infinite-state Markovian jumps and/or multiplicative noise

Policy options for private forest owners in Western Balkans: a qualitative study

Private forest owners start to play an important role in Western Balkans’ forestry and they are essential to the successful implementation of environmental policies. Little is known about how forest policy can support private forest owners in these countries and therefore this study was conducted though a qualitative method, based on personal interviews with representatives of 54 stakeholders that include state forest authorities and administration, private forest owners associations, forest science and research and private sector in Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. The results show significant homogeneity across the region towards creation of independent interest forest owners associations based on financial support. Regression analysis identified stakeholder attitudes as significant predictors of policy preferences and also identified owners of production forest as more supportive of such policies