In this paper a theory of group facilitation and communication is introduced, based on the work of Gregory Bateson and the Palo Alto schools he founded and inspired. This theory permits an analysis of group facilitation processes on the basis of the same principles that inform system dynamic model building and simulation. Through this theory existing lists of appropriate facilitation skills and attitudes are elaborated and augmented. This leads to greater insight into the quality of the process of group model building and possible ways to evaluate that process. Ultimately, the growth and proliferation of system dynamic models and simulations depends on improvement of both process and content of modeling and simulation.
Recently news about the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and avian flu viruses has caused significant panic in many countries. These viruses, for Europe still very much a theoretical danger obscure the much more immediate danger of the human immune deficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS).
We develop a deterministic compartmental simulation model to assess the impact of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) and various other interventions (aimed at modifying behavior) in sub-Saharan countries. We calibrate this model using data from Botswana. To our knowledge our model is the first to include all the important factors of the HIV/AIDS transmission.
The model shows that HAART alone, at the current implementation level, cannot significantly impact the number of HIV/AIDS infected individuals in the long term. The association of HAART with the treatment of other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) seems to be more promising and could cut the number of infected individuals by half by 2010.
The straggled, reactive and inertial orientation of Colombian entrepreneurship has been justified, inconsistently, for the hardness resources agency (internal and leveraged), concept that intensify the deficient technological capabilities being, because this situation only not become a technological means trouble, rather strategic purposes. In fact, a classical one effect of no conscientious recognition of this limitation, explain why so many organizations connect your successful with your intelligence, but failure with exogenous factors impact.
On this understanding and intervention level, this document illustrates 3 criterions of development: (1) integration for selection, (2) learning as absorption, and (3) innovation as evolutionary addressing, through which knowledges constitutes as transversal action and organization principle, with 2 fundamental implications: (1) on theory help to comprehend the systemic determinants of innovation through knowledge structures; (2) on practice, an empirical analysis of this evolutionary system can help to insight focus areas for strategic stimulation of connections and synergies to better performance.
Service supply chains have changed over the last decade from internal and
integrated operations to interorganizational supply networks where many
interdependent organizational units provide fast and high-quality
services to demanding customers. All these units have their own strategic
interests and unaligned operations. The issue of how to coordinate
strategy and operations in these decentralized supply networks is
of paramount business relevance, especially in innovation-driven
industries such as telecom.
In this presentation, an approach is presented to overcome this
issue. Suppliers that normally are rated on aspects
that are under their direct control, so-called "defensive KPI's", can
instead be rewarded for their contribution to end-customer related
performance items, such as the percentage of error-free orders. These so-called "offensive KPI's" arise only from a thorough and shared understanding of the root causes of operational performance across organizational boundaries. Such understanding is created through group-model building meetings with staff involved , using system dynamics methodology. In doing so, both the "soft" and the "hard" aspects are confronted. This approach is described in a case involving the turnaround of the buyer-supplier relation between KPN Telecom, a medium-size European Telco, and Atos Origin, a leading ICT services provider in Europe, that the author supervised directly.
The assessment of nuclear energy systems asks for a modeling of the worldwide nuclear reactor park including all supply chain details, i.e. the nuclear fuel cycle, demands for an integrated nuclear energy system model which also includes feedback loops representing physical feedbacks within the system as well as, and most prominently, socio-political feedbacks in the decision-making on the various available deployment pathways for nuclear energy. Despite the availability since the early 1960s of detailed model-codes for nuclear reactors covering physic, supply chain and economic aspects of nuclear energy, development of a truly system dynamics view on nuclear energy development only recently gained worldwide interest.
This paper will bring an overview on the role of nuclear fuel cycle centres which have recently regained interest in the light of a perceived growing importance of nuclear energy in the worlds energy provision and the inherent proliferation concerns this might entail. Using the DANESS nuclear energy system dynamics code, ANL performs a comprehensive study on various nuclear energy deployment scenarios in six world-regions and the potential role that such regional nuclear fuel cycle centers may play in facilitating such nuclear development while respecting proliferation concerns. The paper will conclude by stressing the importance of a system dynamics perspective in addressing such nuclear energy system deployment scenarios.
Many organizations today use a bell-curve for performance evaluation process. They reward a small percentage of top performers, encourage a large majority in the middle to improve, and lay-off the bottom performers. Companies believe that such pay-for-performance system encourages employees to perform better. The question we explore in this paper is: does the system increase the overall performance of the company over time?
We observe that pressure, if maintained below a certain level, can lead to higher performance. However, with lay-offs, constant pressure demoralizes employees, leading to drop in performance. As the company shrinks, the rigid distribution of bell-curve forces managers to label a high performer as a mediocre. A high performer, unmotivated by such artificial demotion, behaves like a mediocre. Further, managers begin to reward visible performance over the actual. Finally, the erosion of social capital could cripple the company.
We recommend the use of a semi-bell-curve where someone who performers like a top performer is rewarded as one. Further, we recommend balancing pressure and morale. We recognize that such a balance is very difficult to strike, and can be successfully achieved only by decoupling to some extent the performance evaluation process from the issue of lay-offs.
This paper describes the innovative research approach of a project that has recently been funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF). The project aims at analyzing and accelerating managerial and organizational adaptation processes that foster the diffusion of pioneering energy efficient technologies in the building sector. Psychological, managerial, and economic theories as well as results of empirical investigations about antecedents of behavior choices will be synthesized into a simulation model for a middle-sized Swiss city. The model will shed light on dynamic interactions between behavioral factors (e.g., planning, decision making and routines of the relevant actors in the building sector) and contextual factors (e.g., technological innovations, public initiatives, and market conditions), thus explaining the diffusion of energy efficient buildings in a community. The objective of the paper is to discuss the chosen approach, to explore the nature of the topic and present first research heuristics.
Present fuel prices trigger a renewed interest in the energy debate. The paper extends the debate
beyond the present boundaries with a descriptive model that maps two parallel processes on earth: (1)
the stocks & flows of energy, developing between the earths main energy source: the sun, and its main
energy sink: outer space, and (2) the accumulation of a collective memory on earth in the form of
genetic information in living organisms (DNA), and in the increasing number of Bytes of information
created by humans. The model makes it possible to think through the parallel developments of
energy and information, and of the parallel growth of activities that goes with it. It also provides a tool
to distinguish the stocks and flows of energy that drive the economic activities on earth. This may help
the debate to go beyond the stage were all energy remains equated to non-renewable resources, just
like it was equated to horse power in the past.
Hospital medication errors continue to be a significant problem despite the targeted use of information and communications technology (ICT) interventions. In an ongoing program to add an in silico dimension to our multi-method multilevel evaluations we have modelled the significant role of communications in medication error at the context, process and task interaction levels. This extends our previous long-term context and process interaction system dynamics model and adds agent based modeling to more naturally represent the process and task interaction level. The conceptual model integrates previous relevant communications, work and organisational context, task interruption and cognitive overload modeling. The prime focus is to understand and integrate the multiple effects of ICT interventions at multiple levels that can combine to produce unintended results, including new errors. It is being extended to provide a high fidelity systems simulation testbed for designing and testing ICT interventions to reduce medication errors. KEYWORDS: Hospital Medication Error, Communications, ICT, System Dynamics and Agent based modeling