Please see the "Paper" file for the speech given at the conference announcing the award winners. The 2007 winner of the Dana Meadows Student Award for the best student paper presented at the annual conference is: David Wheat, System Dynamics Group, University of Bergen (Norway). His paper is entitled " The Feedback Method of Teaching Macroeconomics: Is it Effective?" 2007 Honorable Mentions (all equally ranked): H. Willem Geert Phaff, Delft University of Technology "Visualising the Effects of Non-linearity by Creating Dynamic Causal Diagrams" and Firat Incioglu, Bogaziçi University, Instanbul "A Dynamic Simulation Model for Long-Term Hypertension Progression."
Several case studies have documented myopic allocation of organizational resources among capabilities that payoff in short vs. long-term. We capture a general class of organizational resource allocation problems in a simple model that exhibits the typical worse-before-better dynamics commonly believed to be responsible for persistence of myopic policies. Next we examine the endogeneity of resources and the impact of competitive pressures on the efficiency of allocation policies. Endogenous resources and competition are both shown to significantly shift the optimal allocation towards myopic policies. Short-term policies become beneficial as they strengthen the positive loop between performance, resources, and capabilities. In fact strategic selection of allocation policy in a competitive market can force the firms to allocate all the resources to the short-term capability. These results provide an alternative explanation for the persistence of myopic organizational decision-rules that does not rest on psychological and learning arguments.
The objective of this paper is to examine the concepts of holism and reductionism as they relate to System Dynamics (SD) and to a lesser extent Systems Thinking (ST) then to relate the findings of that examination to some of the disillusionment with SD and the resultant lack of commercial take up. This paper looks at the concepts of Reductionism and Holism as applied throughout the literature in a broad range of academic areas from medicine and philosophy to physics and looks at different definitions of holism, and reductionism. Practical applications of Reductionist and Holistic principles are examined. From this analysis the fundamental nature of SD as a Holistic/Reductionist methodology is deduced and differentiated from the more generally holistic nature of ST. From this basis the conclusion that SD is a reductionist methodology in practice, though not necessarily described as such by practitioners, is postulated. The paper recommends that there be further work carried out in the field of theoretical and practical holism and greater awareness of these issues within the practitioner community. Within the conclusions there is a pointer for some further fundamental areas of work.
In a 2006 paper in the Journal of Economic Issues, Professor Gregory Hayden argued that system dynamics is an inadequate tool for explaining the institutional systems principles of hierarchy, feedback and openness. The purpose of this paper is to show that Professor Haydens claims are, for the most part, misguided and, in some instances, patently incorrect. Moreover, we will reinforce the view that combining system dynamics with institutional economics can be a very powerful approach to heterodox economic analysis
The emergence of vulnerability black markets enhances the opportunities for malicious actors to launch exploits toward computer networks, to commit cyber-crime and to perform other unlawful activities. Asymmetric information, inadequate software testing, lack of incentive to improve quality of the software are presumed to be the most important grounds of the software vulnerability problems. This work is a preliminary model to build a structure that may explain the factors influencing the emergence of vulnerability black market and to simulate undesired consequences from desired effect to eliminate software vulnerabilities. The purpose of the research is to provide better understanding for information security community about the dynamic features of the software vulnerability and the vulnerability black market problems.
In this paper, ethics is discussed in relation to system dynamics. The domain of ethics is very broad which is why we will first of all demarcate what is meant by ethics here. Then, we will discuss the importance of ethics for the domain of system dynamics and where it could come into play. Calls for, mentions of, and applications of ethics in the system dynamics literature will then be reviewed, followed by a discussion of possible contributions of the explicit consideration of ethics to the domain of system dynamics and of system dynamics to the domain
of ethics. Two examples will be discussed: responsibility and sustainable development. Then, some advantages and disadvantages of combining ethics and system dynamics will be discussed. And finally, possible ways to deal with ethics in system dynamics will furthermore be proposed in the concluding section.
This paper discusses how system dynamics allows to deal with uncertainty, risk, robustness, resilience and flexibility, and how this could be improved. Two venues for improving the capacity of system dynamics to deal with uncertainty, risk, robustness, resilience and flexibility are provided, in both cases by matching system dynamics with other method(ologie)s, more precisely with discontinuous multiple criteria decision analysis and with exploratory modelling.
The main goal of this paper is to explore -using a system dynamics model of the EU-25 electricity generation sector- the transition of the EU-25 electricity generation system towards a more sustainable system characterised by much lower CO2 emissions. The system dynamics model and the resulting dynamics are explored by means of base case simulations, policy simulations, scenario analyses and (univariate and multivariate) sensitivity analyses. Finally, some conclusions, ex-post criticisms and directions for future research are discussed.
This paper reports on an action research case study of integrated obstetric care in the Netherlands. Efficient and patient-friendly patient flows through integrated care networks are of major societal importance. How to design and develop such inter-organizational patient flows is still a nascent research area. We have shown that a modification of an existing method to support inter-organizational collaboration by system dynamics based group model building (the Renga method (Akkermans 2001)) may be effective in achieving such collaboration. At the time writing, the action research project that this paper reports upon is still ongoing, but so far, perceived results are promising.
The effects of two behavioral decision making biases are evaluated within the context of a system dynamics model of a market for a commodity, overconfidence and availability. Overconfidence is modeled as an increase in the percent of a traders capital they are willing to commit to any trade and is found to have the effect of increasing profits for traders with good information relative to traders with poor information, as well as increasing the volatility of the returns for traders with good information more than for traders with poor information. The Availability Bias is modeled as a overweighting of information easily available to a trader and is found to have the effect of increasing the returns of traders with good information easily available to them and decreasing the returns of traders with poor information easily available.