John Sterman
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Registered: 1-1-1970
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![[*]](./images/VSUK/default_icon.gif) posted on 9-4-2001 at 13:42 |
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SD in the California Management Review
Folks,
We wanted to let you know that the latest issue of the California
Management Review (Summer 2001, vol 43, number 4) includes
a special
"symposium" on system dynamics modeling. The symposium, part of an issue
guest-edited by Sara Beckman and Michael Katz (Haas
School of Management at
Berkeley), includes four articles, all written with a nontechnical senior
management audience in mind:
"System Dynamics Modeling: Tools for Learning in a Complex World" by John
Sterman
An introduction to system dynamics,
including discussion of policy
resistance, complex systems, and tools for SD modeling.
"Tradeoffs in Responses to Work Pressure in
the Service Industry" by
Rogelio Oliva
Managerial discussion of the dynamics of service quality, showing
how sustained quality
erosion can arise from locally rational policies,
with a detailed model-based case study of a large UK bank. A more
technical discussion
can be found in Oliva, R. and J. Sterman (2001).
"Cutting Corners and Working Overtime: Quality Erosion in the Service
Industry."
Management Science 47(7): 894-914.
"Past the Tipping Point: The Persistence of Firefighting in Product
Development," by Nelson
Repenning, Paulo Gonçalves, and Laura Black
One of the most common syndromes in product development is
firefighting, the unplanned
allocation of resources to fix problems
discovered later in a products development cycle. Nelson, Paulo and Laura
show how organizations
can become trapped in a vicious cycle where
firefighting steals resources needed to do advanced development work that
might reduce the
need for firefighting on the next generation product.
They show how this dynamic can be self-perpetuating, and discuss policies
to
overcome it.
"Noboby Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened: Creating
and Sustaining Process Improvement," by
Nelson Repenning and John Sterman
The number of tools and and techniques for process improvement is
growing rapidly, but, despite
a few dramatic successes, most firms have
great difficulty implementing these tools successfully. We argue this
difficulty has little to
do with the specifics of the tools. Rather, the
problem has its roots in the interactions of a new tools with the physical,
economic,
social and psychological structures in which implementation takes
place. We present a feedback model to understand how implementation
failure arises and illustrate strategies for overcoming them through case
studies of successful improvement.
The CMR web page is
http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/News/cmr/index_.html, and
should soon have summaries of the issue posted.
Comments welcome.
John Sterman
From: John Sterman
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