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Organizational Intervention Skills as Corporate Competence

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The Usage of System Dynamics in Organizational Interventions

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Abstract

Finding ways to lead and develop organizations is a constant quest seeking to ensure competitiveness in a changing and dynamic world, which is well illustrated by Forrester’s words calling change “the essence of the manager’s environment.”1 Furthermore, industries are typically facing shorter changes cycles in new technologies, competition, value chain, environmental factors, and customer demands, resulting in an increased need for effectiveness and efficiency in organizational change processes.2 The changes constitute challenges representing both threats and new opportunities for the individual business organization, putting pressure on its ability to learn and transform.3 Organizations change in various ways: in organic, incremental processes of adapting to changing environments or in more abrupt organizational interventions.4 The latter way is the focus of this dissertation.

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References

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  72. In this dissertation, strategic formulation is understood to include both strategic planning and policy formulation. In the system dynamics society, the term “policy formulation” is often used as the aim of modeling projects with policies being rules stating how the day-by-day operating decisions are made, see Forrester, Jay W.: Industrial Dynamics, Cambridge, 1961, p. 93. Strategies are constituted by both corporate goals and corporate policies, and strategic planning is defined as the process of transforming corporate goals into policies, see Lyneis, James M.: Corporate Planning and Policy Design: A System Dynamics Approach, Boston, 1980, p. 19 and p. 3.

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  73. ‘Exploratory modeling’ should not be mistaken with ‘exploratory models’ as described in Homer, Jack B.: “Why we iterate: scientific modeling in theory and practice”, System Dynamics Review, Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring 1996, p. 1. Homer defines exploratory models as a kind of easy-made, draft models less occupied with validation. In this dissertation ‘exploratory modeling’ refers to the purpose of the project: to explore and understand a given problem, no matter if the model used is less detailed or if it is highly developed and refined with scientific rigor.

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  74. In Vennix, Jac A. M.: Group Model Building, Chichester, 1996, p. 99, it is argued that learning cannot be predicted in the outset of a project.

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  75. In Vennix, Jac A. M.: Group Model Building, Chichester, 1996, p. 97, it is argued that insights are conceptual rather than instrumental, and although stressing that the purpose of system dynamics is performance improvement, he also states (p. 99) that “implementation becomes evasive.” Richardson, George P. and Alexander L. Pugh: Introduction to System Dynamics Modeling with DYNAMO, Cambridge, 1981, p. 355, write that “a modeling study usually focuses on what policies will help, not on how those policies ought to be introduced into the system.”

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  79. Borum, Finn: Strategier for organisationsændringer, Copenhagen, 1995, p. 58, discuss the problem of “a free, informed choice as a condition for establishment of commitment” in a change process planned and controlled by consultants.

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  81. An interesting case, where a modeling project was continued into instrumental implementation activities is the well-known “Maintenance Game” described in Repenning, Nelson P. and John D. Sterman: “Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened: Creating and Sustaining Process Improvement”, California Management Review, Vol. 43, No. 4, Summer 2001, pp. 64–88.

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  83. For discussions on “Employee Involvement”, see both Cummings, Thomas G. and Christopher G. Worley: Organizational Development and Change, Ohio, 2001, p. 317; and Thun, Jörn-Henrik, Peter M. Milling, and Uwe Schwellbach: “The Impact of Total Employee Involvement on Time-based Manufacturing”, in Blackmon, Kate, Steve Brown, Paul Cousins, Andrew Graves, Christine Harland, Richard Lamming, and Harvey Maylor (eds.): “What Really Matters in Operations Management”, Bath, 2001, pp. 133–135.

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(2007). Organizational Intervention Skills as Corporate Competence. In: The Usage of System Dynamics in Organizational Interventions. DUV. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-8350-9543-4_1

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