Project-based organisations are increasingly becoming an important originator of innovations. Innovation in project-based organisations faces particular challenges due to issues of resource allocation, feedback and learning, corporate governance and client relationships. As innovation and capability accumulation in these organisations occurs largely in the context of project execution, the resources available for innovative work within projects, as well as the type and complexity of these projects, are a major influence on innovative performance. The strategies employed for the acquisition of new work represent a key lever in determining innovative outcomes. Drawing on the growing literature of project-based organisations in general, in particular innovation in project environments and contributions of scholars studying engineering design and project management, this paper presents a conceptual approach - linking work acquisition, learning and innovation in project-based service organisations. This theory is expressed in diagrammatic form, providing a succinct representation of the complex relationships in addition to providing a starting point for an analysis of the challenges facing the management of project-based organisations, in particular, the vicious circles potentially impeding success. This analysis can help to elucidate findings from prior in-depth studies of a large number of engineering and design firms.
The United States is about to face years of major, interrelated policy issues. Energy transition, peak oil, and the threat of global warming, together with heightened fears of terrorism, environmental and social issues are largely crowded out of public dialogue. What is needed is an analytical tool that addresses these issues in an integrated and transparent way. The Threshold 21 (T21) model customized to the USA, is such a tool. The purpose of this study is to analyze T21-USA, by highlighting its flexibility and transparency. The analysis shows that T21-USA is a good tool for understanding and analyzing validity, effectiveness and outcomes of complex energy policies, such as the Advanced Energy Initiative -follow up of the State of the Union Address. Despite its complexity, T21-USA is transparent and a user-friendly interface makes it an intuitive instrument that can be used by a broad audience, ranging from students to policy makers.
Our objective is to foster the understanding of the economic impact on environment. We apply SD modelling methodology and conduct our simulation. We investigate major trends of global threats: deteriorating environment and depletion of non-renewable resources. We list the important and causal relationships among the levels and trace the feedback loop structures. In describing an economic and environmental model we focus on the relationship among income, pollution, and non-renewable. This paper yields insight into the possibilities for replacing non- renewable fossil fuels with more renewable ones. Next, we present the simulation runs of the model, conducted with the help of existing system dynamics modelling tools.
The relevance of abductive inference- the process of forming hypotheses- to System Dynamics (SD) methodology has been raised previously by Ryan (1996) and Barton (1999).
This paper provides a further explication of this relevance. Specifically, it provides:
An introduction to the logic of abductive inference and its relevance to describing the management process.
An interpretation of the Events- Patterns of Events- Structure framework as an application of abductive inference.
A re-framing of the methodological debates between Forrester (1968) and Ansoff and Slevin (1968)
Implications for interpreting the role of the SD model within a complete learning structure.
In environments that demand a high degree of flexibility together with rapid and accurate decision-making, network centric command structures have been promoted as the organizational solution to meet these demands. Network centric command structures, arguably, enhance the situation awareness and the understanding of the situation. The NCW (Network Centric Warfare) Learning Lab was developed to allow systematic, simultaneous experimental manipulation of structural and individual varibles, in order to observe the effects on dependent variables such as actual and perceived operational effectiveness. The Learning Lab was designed to particularly stimulate the dynamic aspects of decision making. Our preliminary results show that a network centric organization does not necessarily lead to higher perceived situation awareness or better understanding of the situation. Although our findings are in contrast to contemporary writings on the organization of military operations, we find them to make sense in light of basic theories about information processing in organizations.
Developed countries should find cost-effective ways to decrease Green House Gas (GHG) emissions to comply with their Kyoto Protocol targets by year 2012. The target can be achieved either by domestic emission reduction or by buying quotas in international markets. Policy makers have to choose between these policy options and decide to what extend and when to use them. In democratic countries these choices may be constrained by limited information and misperception among voters and politicians. Bias in the decisions may occur because the choice of policy is complicated by dynamics and uncertainty. To explore the possibility of misperceptions we perform a laboratory experiment where subjects are asked to make this difficult policy decision during 12 years preceding 2012. Biases in the implementation of the policies were found.
This paper compares methods for parameter estimation of diffusion models when seeking to extend these to service industry contexts from the traditional product focus. In the marketing science and economics literature, parameter estimation is dominated by econometric methods. This presents certain limitations as well as advantages compared to calibration in system dynamics modelling, which emphasises estimation of parameters by direct observation. But this poses a problem for industry or market-level diffusion models where deriving aggregate parameters in this way is impractical, especially for launches of new products or services which lack direct market knowledge. One solution is to use judgemental bootstrapping, implying estimating parameters from an experts forecast time series. Models parameterised this way can then be used as a basis for simulated structural experiments of proposed market architectures. Some interim results from three service industry case studies are presented.
In this paper we describe a system dynamics model developed to examine the feasibility of an environmental restoration banking system. Under this proposed system credits are issued by a governing authority to a restoration bank in return for undertaking environmental restorations. Users of the environmental resource are then required to purchase these restoration credits. A case study was developed for restoration of coastal mangrove forests in Thailand. Model simulations show that the restoration banking system may be effective in restoring coastal mangroves and in rehabilitating the coastal shrimp farming industry which is dependent on environmental services provided by the mangrove stock.
Service Systems are nowadays considered as the most profitable assets of both Private Companies and Public Organizations, since they offer a highly added value for many different kind of products, tangible and intangible. Among them, a Call-Center is considered to be as very difficult both to understand and hence to perfectly manage. This is mainly due to its intrinsic dynamics and to the unpredictable behaviour of input data. Furthermore, modern Call-Centers tend to focus on the management of various different types of calls, which usually require the government of different situations together with a different agents' skill management. In such a scenario, the main objective is to find an efficient way to organize and manage a multi-task Call-Center. We will show how these kind of Call-Centers can efficiently be managed through a Dynamic Skill-Based Routing policy, instead of a Static Skill-Based Routing or even a call-processing policy using separate trunks-lines. After describing the typical structures of Call-Centers, well define a SD model, stating again how a simulation model can be useful in the management and sizing of a Call-Center. The paper will end with a case study where, through the simulation of different policies, it will be shown how the Dynamic Skill-Based Routing is the most efficient way to manage multi-call-types Call-Centers
The distinctive role of a delocalized peripheral Public Administration is nowadays commonly acknowledged to be mostly consisting in providing services to its community of citizens. In order to accomplish this mission, the local administration has the evident and constant need of a certain cash amount, which should be basically ensured by incomes due to taxes imposed on citizens and that should hopefully require a regular and continuous cash flow. The last aspect represents a condition which usually is absolutely important and even necessary in order to properly and effectively schedule and manage the services that are then to be provided. Thus, in a complex and evolving legislative and administrative context such as the Italian one, this paper will try to state and show, by means of a system dynamics modelling approach, how a financial operation like the securitization of collectable credits performed by local PAs may constitute an efficient, effective and reliable tool in order to support proper and strategic decisions concerning the operation structuring as well as help reduce the collection delay, thus granting the organization with that sufficient liquidity which will be necessary to manage the actual services to the citizens and to program the provision of new ones on a larger time horizon.