Firms need to act entrepreneurially to compete in today ultra-competitive business environment. This requires firms to actively search for and exploit opportunities to increase revenues or decrease costs in an uncertain environment. Within a firm, these activities are the functions of the entrepreneur or the entrepreneurial resources. In return for their services, these resources receive payments known as entrepreneurial rents. These rents are the result of subjective judgments and the activities that generate them are subject to imitation. Thus, entrepreneurial rents are both ex ante non-contractible and temporary. These characteristics make their measurement difficult for managers. This paper is an attempt to measure entrepreneurial rents using a system dynamics framework. System dynamics models are uniquely positioned to capture the dynamic complexities of these rents. In doing so, I present a SD model of a three-site hog production operation and compute the entrepreneurial rents generated from several arbitrage and innovation activities.
This paper focuses on the application of system dynamics in the integration of knowledge management (KM) and human resource management (HRM) with specific reference to the determination of the optimum setting of time-based policy parameters. The integration of KM and HRM is w.r.t. the engineering competence pool development and deployment. The feedback as well as feed-forward loops were used in the development of the control loops, which govern the simulation carried out in two distinct stages. In both the stages, the influence of the governing time-based policy parameters has been studied to investigate the critical parameters, which significantly influence the effectiveness of the system. The simulation results envisage the effect of the policy parameters, based on which implications are drawn for better policy evaluation and control. Even though the study has a national context, the procedure adopted in this research has the potential to be extended to the global level.
System dynamics concepts and methods are rarely referenced in the field of coastal resources management, even though coastal systems and decision-making are dynamically complex and the SD literature offers a rich and relevant body of theory, practice and models. Recent work in the theory of ecosystem management calls for the use of modeling and is becoming of increasing interest to coastal managers. A simple stock and flow model of coastal management is presented that is drawn from the legislative design of one of the oldest and certainly successful U.S. state programs, Rhode Islands Coastal Resources Management Program. This model exhibits several dynamic behaviors intuitively familiar to coastal managers. Model runs are presented using parameters taken from the Rhode Island case, including runs with and without the coastal management program in place. These results are compared with performance data from the 35 year Rhode Island coastal programs permit data base, and closely reproduce long term trends in key variables. The forward-looking scenarios are utilized to suggest approaches for the state program as it enters the new century. Implications for newly emerging coastal programs in developing countries are also drawn.
The growing reliance on technological infrastructures has made organizations increasingly vulnerable to threats from erstwhile trusted employees and clients. Recent research indicates that successful defense from these threats depends on both technical and behavioral solutions. In this paper, we report on our work to identify seemingly reasonable organizational actions that may inadvertently lead to increased risk exposure. We also consider how potential internal attackers may be encouraged or discouraged by monitoring the organizational responses to probes of the firms security systems.
Two interwoven work products are presented: A case study that presents a particular type of insider threat long-term fraud and a simulation model that supports the case, the underlying dynamic theory, and examination of policy options. The case and model combine to produce a motivating and useful exercise that illustrates the problems of insider cyber-threats. This material has been used in teaching of insider threat issues with satisfactory results.
The December 4th, 2004 issue of The Economist had a 3-page Special Report
entitled The future of the dollar which cites the following from the Roubini-Setser (R-S) paper ; if the real trade-weighted value of the dollar remains close to its average in 1990-2003 ( slightly above current levels ) and there is no change in domestic policy, Americas current-account deficit would rise to 8% of GDP in 2008 and its net debt would increase to over 50% of GDP. This projection came from one of three scenario simulations ( their Baseline scenario ) based on a model described in the R-S paper. The R-S papers model, when replicated in Vensim, contains one positive feedback loop to represent how interest on debt leads to exponential debt growth but excludes much of the of the papers rich mental models which imply much more endogenous model structure than that used in the papers scenario simulation model. This SD conference paper recreates the R-S scenario simulation model and then presents another version which tries to include more endogenous model structure based on the R-S papers own rich discussion and mental models.
Telecommunications in developing countries lack adequate planning and policies, so their telephone densities show the lowest values worldwide. The failure in considering the complexity of the regional telecommunication system in developing policies and technological strategies has increased the telecom gap between other regions and this particular sector of the world. We used a system dynamics modeling approach as a methodology that deals with the complexity of the system in order to evaluate existing value added services and access technologies in telecommunications that could accelerate the dispersion of regional telephone services in developing countries. The role of wireless systems, which have a low deployment delay, was found to be crucial in the growth of urban and rural telecom infrastructure in developing countries. The value added services were found to have a positive impact by increasing the financial resources of the telecom company and the number of urban telephone lines.
A novel archetype, abstracted from published work and supported by anecdotal analogies is proposed. Its novelty is evidenced by a comparison with the 'Relative Control' archetype from Wolstenholme's classification. The significant difference is the erasure of the system boundary from 'Relative Control'. The effect is to bring the dynamics entirely within the system thereby creating a 'political' archetype: a structure internalizing the struggle between two opposed policies.
How can we build dynamic models to effectively inform our research? The System Dynamics method offers established practices and principles to enable us to do so. This boot camp is directed to expose PhD students to the (iterative) SD modeling process.
The workshop consists of two parts. In the first part participants will engage in the process of model building from a case and getting some basic insights. Issues that will be discussed include problem definition, model boundary, scope/level of aggregation, generating insights from modeling, as well as challenging the research question.
The second part of the boot camp will address actual issues from participants research based on the important themes discussed in the first section. For this we ask participants to submit a one/two page summary of their current research, comprising: abstract, research questions, motivation for model and two or three main issues. We encourage submitting models in whatever stage of progress. The summaries should be in at latest on Monday of the conference (though earlier is strongly suggested!). The case material will be available upfront so that the participants read the case before hand.
Note: this workshop does not involve one-on-one coaching that the modeling assistance workshop offers, nor has it the conference setup of the PhD colloquium. These sessions are complementary to each other and participants are encouraged to participate in all of them.
Product development (PD) is a crucial capability for firms in competitive markets. Building on case studies of software development constructed from fieldwork at a large firm, this paper explores the interaction among the different stages of the PD process, the underlying architecture of the product, and the products in the field. The study corroborates the dynamics of tipping into firefighting (Repenning 2001) that follows quality-productivity tradeoffs under pressure. Moreover, we introduce the concept of the adaptation trap, where intendedly functional adaptation of workload can overload the PD organization and force it into firefighting because there is a delay in seeing the additional resource need from the field and underlying code-base. Finally, the study highlights the importance of architecture and underlying product-base in platform-based product development, through their impact on quality of new models under development, as well as resource requirements for bug-fixing. Put together, these dynamics elucidate some of the reasons why PD capability is hard to build and how it erodes. Consequently, we offer hypotheses on the characteristics of the PD process that increase its strategic significance and discuss some practical challenges in the face of these dynamics.
This paper provides an example of a system dynamics model that incorporates soft variables. The model examines the challenges that a superpower faces while maintaining its position in the global economic system. The effects on aggregate welfare of the population at home and abroad, as well as, issues of sustaining authority in the long run are explored through experimentation with a computer model. This theory is an extension of the framework developed by Saeed(1990), which was used to understand political instability and the failure of the government to stay committed to welfare agendas in the
developing countries. The present model captures the interaction between several institutional actors involved with the economic and the governance systems. They include the public, the authoritarian regime, the reformist movements that seek change within the existing framework, and the dissident movements that turn to violent methods.