Study on the Evolutionary Mechanism from Operational Research Activities to Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Abstract

Some researches indicated that operational research activities could achieve a sustainable competitive advantage for the organization. However, how to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage by operational research activities has not yet been scientifically and entirely revealed. Based on theories of management entropy and management dissipative structure, it establishes the entropy flow model and discourses on the positive and negative entropy flows in the evolutionary process from operational research activities to sustainable competitive advantage. Then, it develops formulations of management dissipative structure containing the positive and negative entropy flows from organization and environment. By solving these formulations, the value of total entropy can be calculated, and whether the formation of management dissipative structure can be estimated. This research provides a new referenced scheme to reduce the increasing of positive entropy flow and introduce negative entropy flow to accelerate the evolutionary process from operational research activities to sustainable competitive advantage.