Performance planning and control in virtual business structures

It could be argued that the development of new business models has occurred at such a pace that many of the important considerations accompanying their development have been overlooked. It is interesting to note that due to the shift away from traditional business structures such as vertically integrated, closely controlled organizations, towards virtual organizations, for which coordination is more important, we have not paid sufficient attention to the important issues of planning and control needs for these new structures. This contribution reviews recent discussion on the structure of new business models and identifies some of the attempts at introducing planning and control into these organizations. The article proposes an approach to this problem by considering the components of the new business models, their stakeholders and their objectives and offers a model which forms the basis from which research can commence.