Entrapping Landmine Structure in Microworlds Formed with
Uncontrollable Positive Feedback Loops
Showing H. Young, Associate Professor
Chia Ping Chen, Doctoral Student
Department of Business Management
National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Abstract
In studying humanbeing's decision-making in microworlds, there are some researches about
humanbeing's cognitive issues in decision-making. There are also some interesting issues on
the microworld side. When playing microworlds, players might encounter some underlying
structures which are very difficult to deal with. Among these structures, there exist what we
called "landmine structure"--burried in the microworld there are a certain hidden dangerous
structure, nothing happened if not being bothered, but once step on and being triggered will
unavoidabblly explode wildly and very difficult to rescue. In this research, we are focused on
the issue: why some microworlds have much stronger tendency to induce players almost
unavoidablly be entrapped into a certain helpless landmine structure than other microworlds?
We first classified the feedback loops more delicately according to their variance in the pattern
of behaviors so that we can have clearer corresponding relationships between structure and
behavior. We then studied two of the most famous microworlds, the Beer Game and People
Express Management Flight Simulator, as our samples of research. In the Beer Game, almost
all the players will be entrapped into the systemic forces formed by some uncontrollable
positive feedback loops and felt very helpless. It seemed that the resulting pattern of behaviors
were unavoidable to all humanbeings. When playing People Express Management Flight
Simulator, players have some more rooms and chances to avoid the landmine structure. Why
they are different? When took the catalogue of the feedback loops to analyze both microworlds,
we found that there hid some uncontrollable positive feedback loops. If players unconsciously
trigger these loops, the behavior of the system will be dominated by these loops and the
decision makers just can not do anything to recover the system. How sensitive this type of
landmine structure being triggered mainly depends on the discrepancy or "safety distance”
between the current state of the system and a certain critical state. For example, in the Beer
Game the initial state of the system is very close to the critical state. If the players can not make
the current state of the system far enough away from the critical state of “being entrapped"
before the small "jump-up" of the exogenous demand, the landmine structure will be triggered
unavoidably. When playing People Express Management Flight Simulator, the initial state of
the system is far away from the critical state. Thus, if the players can make some right
decisions, the landmine structure may not be triggered. The findings of this research should be
very helpful in designing some “surprising effects” into microworlds so that some of the
intuitive thoughts of the players can be challenged. Some other implications for management
S41
issues will also be discussed in this paper.
Introduction
The evolution of S.D.
Policy Lab. — Learning Lab.
human being' s decision making
in microworld (learning lab.)
decision
people microworld
information
new studying issues
- human cognitive issues
+ microworld structure issues
-l-
Uncontrollable positive loops
multi-decision makers
the control power not in this position]
rigid mental model
let human action lose control
For example:
the word of mouth, turnover,
panic, debt, escalation, addiction
-3-
Analysis Tool:
more refine causal loops
The type of positive feedback
loops
Controllable positive loops
Uncontrollable positive loops
action 9) state
The type of negative feedback
loops
three dimensions
uncontrollable
eight catalogs
-4-
546
Landmine Structure
Define: the structure
hid at least one of the
uncontrollable positive
feedback loop which can
make the structure
deteriorate.
Character:
- similar to landmine
- difficulty aware of
uncontrollable positive
feedback loops
Beer Game
= orden
s a é +
A) a ty PR a
ae J a) safe inventory
delivery - “.
delay > ventory —tebacklog 6
+
upstream
inventory
upstream
backlog
e
downstream delivery
delay
Ee
“Er
4 ld
a downstream
uncontrollable positiv:
- producing destructive feedback loop Penis
power
- surprising effect,
countintuitive
« hepless,
hardly rescue
. structure dominate ~6-
player
-5-
People Express Management Flight Simulaor
relative
wx fare
potential
passengers
Q~1 9
PE _ passengers the word
fleet Mroaq oC) flown of mouth service
quality
ae factor.
purchase.
aircraft
turnover
work "'b
load
=
average
uncontrollable positive
feedback loop
—Pr hiring we te, employees
total ro
i employees P
QD
ie fraction
Zz productivity
a
total
productivity
544
The difference of two
microworld
New concept:
safety distance=current state-
critical state
critical state: state which landmine
structure is just being tirggered
How to measure: "loop by loop
simulation algorithm" (Kim, 1995)
Beer Game:
safety distance short
easily trigger
People Express M.F.S:
safety distance long
hard trigger
-8-
2. Complement S.D.
S.D.
+»
system problem
oriented oriented
Flaw: easily neglect dormant loops
during the time frame of the
reference mode
How to complement
step1: regular diagonsis
focus on landmine
find out uncontrollable loop
step2: special issue diagonsis
focus on interesting behavior
use problem oriented S.D.
“10+
Application
1. Design microworld
complexity of
systems microworld
thinking -
capabilty y i
4 load of
+ cognitive
probability capacity
of learning
wt . vy
cognitive
involvement
+
curiosity
wate bur
surprising effect
+
Landmine Structure
-9-
Future Research
What is the forming process
What is the entrapping process
How to identify
How to deal after exploding
before exploding
The nature of landmine structure
intensity
speech
character
generic case
early warning symptom
-l1-
boo
