The purpose of the paper is to propose a modelling approach to be used in targeted organisational interventions focusing on strategic business objectives and change management. The approach builds upon prevalent participative modelling approaches with the extension of increased focus on intervention planning, stakeholder management, and structured implementation. A single-site longitude case study regarding development of a balanced R&D location strategy served as inspiration for the development of the approach and in the paper it also serves as a practical illustration of the approach. Interesting insights include successful observations of individual learning and group communication in a modelling study, which is more targeted on predefined business objectives than usually seen in the SD community. However, generic conclusions must await further research within the area.
The 5th International Ph.D. Colloquium is an event of the System Dynamics Student Chapter. The objective of the colloquium is to bring together Ph.D. Students working on foundations, techniques, tools, and applications of System Dynamics and give them the opportunity to present and discuss their research in a constructive and international atmosphere. The Colloquium will also provide an opportunity for student participants to interact with established faculty and others in the wider system dynamics community. The diversity and the interactive setting should provide a unique learning opportunity for all participants of the colloquium. This year, the all-day colloquium will open with a speech given by Professor Repenning. The colloquium will consist of number of sessions with oral presentations followed up by parallel workshops, as well as a large poster session in the afternoon. We have received more that 20 submissions and we believe and hope it will be an interesting day with many fruitful discussions.
The paper describes a partnership project between three parties, centred on the use of System Dynamics (SD) in a Mental Health Trust (MHT). The main learning experiences relate to the politics of introducing challenging concepts in a situation where participants prefer to avoid confrontation. The rigorous nature of SD modeling and simulation raises questions which operational managers may fear reflect badly on the organization and their own capabilities. They may be uncomfortable with questions about the evidence-base for current treatments, or the research to back their ideas for future developments. A further issue is the ambiguity inherent in definitions of SD and the likelihood that many managers prefer single-issue projects, based on their comfort zone of practice/expertise. A hypothesis is developed to describe the observed reactions in the project and suggest alternative approaches in carrying out SD projects in the UK public sector.
A variety of approaches are being developed to elicit knowledge from clients and develop that knowledge into conceptual maps and formal simulation models. We completed a project that provides a case example where the standard method was adapted for use in a group model-building intervention. We worked with a group of 10 wildlife managers to support system conceptualization, model formulation, and management response to an increase in negative human-black bear interactions in residential areas of New York State. This article discusses the procedural and conceptual steps, insights, and lessons learned from our model building intervention. Our paper focuses on model-building process and learning outcomes, rather than quantitative validation of a simulation model.
Most large development projects suffer overruns and delays, despite substantial effort spent on systems tracking risks and projecting performance. Managers have an especially difficult time making big decisions such as major project re-plans. Typical project management systems have key blind spots that limit their value for comprehensive decisions. Most project management tools are blind to project dynamics variations in productivity and quality over time under different conditions. System Dynamics models have been used to address this weakness and capture project dynamics, but typically these models have their own blind spots as they omit key details. With many pressing decisions and little time, managers rely on intuition to supplement the limitations of management tools. The combination of little time for major decisions, limited tools, and unreliable intuition is a key contributor to the poor results often achieved on major projects. This paper offers perspective on the challenges of making major decisions and describes a case using an integrated management tool -- a System Dynamics model linked to a database of project details. This management system was used to restructure a multi-billion dollar development program with detail and rigor examining dozens of different options, sensitivities, and leverage points in one month.
Studies made by the Swiss politician Jean Ziegler show that the world agricultural system is able to feed twice the population of the planet. However, 800 million people are hungry. During the last years, the Colombian Government has been designing policies oriented to provide solutions to the hunger problem and thus to decrease the number of Colombian families which lack this fundamental right, the food supply. However, the effects of these policies have not been the expected ones, on the contrary, lower class people is still plunged into poverty and hunger. Why have they not been effective? Which have been the consequences of implementing those policies?
Considering the impact of economic liberalization during the 90s on the agricultural sector, a model has been constructed taking into account the national production, the cultivated area, the people working and the capital invested on the agricultural process. The simulation results of the implementation of the commerce liberalization policies seem to match with the results recorded in the Agricultural and Rural development Ministry. Finally, the model will be tested in a scenario that includes the policies that are part of the Development Plan proposed by the current Government 2002-2006 to observe possible consequences of this implementation.
Effective citizenship for the 21st Century calls for young people adept at understanding a world of growing interdependence and multiculturalism. This means new intellectual foundations for understanding complexity and new learning skills for building shared understanding of complex issues like sustainability. Yet most of our schools remain much as they have long been, with sharply demarked subject matters and public education policies that stiffen these disciplinary identities. The result is that even older students have little mastery of understanding of the critical problems shaping their world. New educational outcomes require new educational systems - not just "school systems" in the traditional bureaucratic use of the word but learning communities within and beyond the school that can affect all aspects of children's lives. Peter will share information and invite conversation around current work to develop a network of innovative school systems pioneering a multi-layer view of curricular, institutional and community innovation.
The strategy to recover components from discarded electrical and electronic equipment to obtain spare parts is promising, especially during the final service phase. In that phase, the original product is no longer produced and the sources of new parts are often limited. Controlling those closed-loop supply chains is challenging. Decision makers have to choose when to acquire discarded equipment, when to recover used parts, and when to produce new parts. We developed a generic system dynamics model that provides a test for various proposed policies to control closed-loop supply chains with parts recovery and spare-parts supply.
In banks decisions are made in a speedy and complex environment often with huge uncertainty. This risk must be managed proactively on an enterprise level. To accomplish this task, a systemic view of the bank is essential. Up to now there is no standardised approach for analysing the overall risk dynamics of a bank that is capable of describing the forces inherent in risk management. Most risk models are constrained by their static view, so that they hardly capture the rapid and discontinuous changes. This paper examines the dynamics by applying system dynamics to enterprisk risk management, with the aim of understanding the banks risk dynamics. In order to simulate the risk dynamics of a universal bank a dynamical enterprise risk model was developed. By combining the disciplines of enterprise risk management and system dynamics, this paper shows how a systemic view can improve structures in bank risk management and the need for large system thinking.
This paper proposes a contribution to the domain of systems thinking skills. Empirical studies have repeatedly shown surprising misperceptions and inabilities in subjects confronted with tasks involving very simple stock and flow systems. Here it is proposed to represent these skills as implicit integration, by which Polanyi modeled our ability to know. In this framework, Dreyfus and Dreyfus five stage model of learning is used to construct three hypotheses concerning the learning of systems thinking and its importance for learning from modeling and interaction with models. The tests elaborated by Ossimitz are adapted for this purpose and some tasks are added, to serve in the experimental corroboration of the hypotheses. Since the empirical work is currently under way, only few results can be presented; consequently the main contribution is the conceptual construction of the hypotheses.