In the modern era, the advances in information technology have been dramatically shaping the ways people live as well as the ways organizations manage their businesses in their professional business domains. Implementing various kinds of information systems, such as Decision Support Systems, has been recognized as one of the most crucial tasks for organizations in order to continue to be competitive or even to survive. Although considerable effort has been devoted to improving the performance of information system implementations, organizations are still constantly suffering from the failures of information system implementations. In this study an extensive framework that depicts the context of information system implementation is developed. A system dynamics approach is used to investigate the dynamic nature of information system implementations. By using the proposed system dynamics model, we contend, executives and information system professionals of organizations can gain comprehensive insights into organizational behaviors and substantial policy-making implications regarding information system implementations.
The pattern of one-shot growth is most seen in software industry. The purpose of this paper is to understand the growth dynamics of a software house and to facilitate the software house to manage its growth. This paper models a major domestic ERP software house in Taiwan that is experiencing the one-shot growth process. Business type-level packages and high quality service is the companys secrets for its success. With a good reputation for high quality systems and services, the companys growth strategy is to expand the market it serves by developing new kinds of packages for more business types. However, how to balance the human resources requirements of R&D and ERP is rather difficult when long delays exist everywhere in a software house. With the system dynamics model built, this paper identifies the archetype of limits to growth hidden inside the software house and illustrates how the problem is worsened by the companys intuitive reactions.
A discussion, with panelists representing different perspectives, facilitated to encourage full participation by everyone present. The field of inquiry dubbed environmental dynamics (ED) includes a broad range of interests, many with differing views of the ecological world. These include, for example, purely ecological studies involving the interactions of organisms and their natural environment, technical studies of the effects of human activities on the environment and different methods employed to limit or counteract those effects, big picture analysis of the human-influenced world and the direction it is headed, plus many others. Popular topics often associated with ED include: environmental regulation, the ecocosm dilemma, the oil crisis, global warming, environmental limits [to growth], etc. The roundtable will explore the relationships among these different topics, emphasizing the role of system dynamics. The goals will be to establish common ground, to create useful distinctions, and to help organize the ED endeavor.
In order to determine whether model testing is as useful as suggested by modeling experts, the full battery of model tests recommended by Forrester, Senge, Sterman, and others was applied retrospectively to a complex previously-published system dynamics model. The time required to carry out each type of test was captured, and the benefits that resulted from applying each test was determined subjectively. The resulting benefit to cost ratios are reported. These ratios suggest that rather than focusing primarily on sensitivity testing, modelers should consider other types of model tests such as extreme condition tests and family member tests. The study also finds that all of the different kinds of tests were either moderately useful or very useful--fully supporting the recommendations of the experts. An interesting diagram called a "tornado diagram" is used to portray the results of the sensitivity testing.
The tourism industry is considered a very important factor that contributes to the economic development Egypt. The industry has shown growth in the recent years in the number of tourist arrivals to reach a maximum of 6 million in 2003. It could not be denied that government efforts contributed to the growth but nevertheless the devaluation of the pound had a significant influence on the number of visitors. The performance of the industry might look fine in general. But, this is if compared to previous performance only. However, if an in-depth look is taken it is realized that the Egyptian tourism is performing far below capacity. This paper aims at explaining the way to improve the performance of the Egyptian tourism industry using a system dynamics methodology. This will be done by defining the main factors affecting the industry, then explaining how the whole system works and finally proposing a new modified model and required course of action.
The researchers attempt to visualize the complexity and dynamic behaviour of SME clusters in Egypt throughout the process of transferring a clusters state from static (idle) to dynamic (productive). This research constitutes the second of two complementary phases of a more comprehensive research that tries to quantify the qualitative measures of dynamic clusters through extending the application of the business dynamics tool to simulate the effect of different cluster-based economic development policy scenarios. After developing the mental model and during the conceptualization phase, the researchers highlighted the key-leverage causal loops showing feedback effects and uncovering the hidden cause effect relationships existing between the most important elements such as trust level inside the cluster, competition and the number of supporting industries. After validating the model, the researchers designed the policy analysis runs and undertook different scenario analysis over a time span of 50 years. Scenario analysis included studying the effect of elements such as institutions for collaboration (IFCs) on cooperation; effect of broker efficiency and success stories on trust building; and effect of trust on learning.
Dwindling government resources and demands for increased accountability have challenged nonprofit organizations to meet their primary missions while also creating efficient and effective back-office accounting and information systems. Even though many nonprofits say that accounting and information support systems are mission-critical, they tend to staff these systems weakly and to be less efficient than they could be. The present paper uses a system dynamics model to show how the Limits to Growth and Shifting the Burden systems archetypes help explain this situation. The model runs show that the exercise of leadership is the underlying issuenonprofit managers must challenge organizational cultures and mindsets that act as limiting factors, causing the nonprofits to avoid implementing fundamental solutions to their problems. The paper discusses several action recommendations.
This study reports of an experimental economics analysis of the new proposed Swedish-Norwegian tradable green certificate market (TGC). The green certificate market is a financial instrument to stimulate renewables within the context of liberalized, transnational electricity markets (a kind of market-oriented subsidy scheme). Green certificates are financial assets issued to green producers that can be traded freely. Previous system dynamics studies showed that trading- and investment behaviour were critical factors in analyzing the market dynamics. As a follow-up, this experimental economics study conducted 14 laboratory experiments with about 10 to 20 students per session. A particular feature is that participants handle both short-term trading and long-term investments, which allow us to analyze the interplay between these types of decisions without imposing behavioural assumptions on the model. The laboratory experiment shows that the market is likely to crash, due to the long time delays of supply side adjustment. The study provided new insights concerning agents trading and investment strategies, in particular the performance of various market designs. The mix of trading strategies employed in response to the experiments, are difficult to understand and capture in an SD model.
The paper describes a system dynamics model developed for dynamic analysis of human resource for the agricultural sector in different sources of employment, viz., government, private (including corporate), academic, financial institutes, non-governmental organizations, self employment, and others in India. Besides projecting an overall scenario for continuation of current agricultural education policy and trends, the paper analyses simulated results from the model for the current curriculum with 80:20 proportion of technical to soft skills. The analysis shows that in the coming years the private sector will emerge as a major employer for the graduates of agriculture and allied sciences.
Following several calls for participation in environmental policy, an increasing attention is being dedicated to the development of deliberative platforms for the sustainable governance of our global village. In this paper, we start by adding perspective on the role of participatory modeling within a strong participatory vision for sustainability. We then explore how system dynamics and ecological economics worldviews interlock in promoting participatory modeling approaches to environmental decision-making. Focusing on the synergies between group model-building and mediated modeling, some lessons from two participatory interventions developed in Portugal are extracted. The evaluation of the case studies indicates positive outcomes at the individual and group level, with respect to learning, reaction, commitment, communication and consensus. The outcomes at the organizational level are still more limited. Further research is suggested on the comparison and complementarity between participatory modeling and other deliberative methods.