Search results for "Systems thinking"

Transforming Food Systems at Local Levels: Using Participatory System Dynamics in an Interactive Manner to Refine Small-Scale Farmers’ Ment…

2016

Food systems will need to undergo considerable transformation. To be better prepared for and resilient to uncertainty and disturbances in the future, resource users and managers need to further develop knowledge about the food and farming system, with its dominating feedback structures and complexities, and to test robust and integrated system-based solutions. This paper investigates how participatory system dynamics modeling can be adapted to groups at the community level with low or no formal educational background. The paper also analyzes the refinement of workshop participants’ mental models as a consequence of a participatory system dynamics intervention. For this purpose, we…

Governing Business Systems. Theories and Challenges for Systems Thinking in Practice

2017

Systemic Approaches for Business Innovation and Sustainability. Editorial Note to the Special Section for the 2nd BS Lab Symposium-Rome 2014

2014

Our times are characterized by intense transformations in the competitive logics of markets and, broadly speaking, of business systems. Business scenarios today are typified by dynamism, connectivity, nonlinearity, and emergent properties—i n other words by ‘complexity’ (Dominici,2012). The systemic approach has been pivotal to open new lenses and understandings of the inner dynamics of complex systems. In recent times, we have witnessed a paradigm shift in the managerial approach from the whole/part model to the systemice nvironmental approach. This shift generated the epistemological frame of the systemic approach to social sciences in the fields of sociology, management and economics (Pita…

Transforming food systems at local levels: using participatory system dynamics in an interactive manner to refine small-scale farmers’ mental models

2017

Food systems will need to undergo considerable transformation. To be better prepared for and resilient to uncertainty and disturbances in the future, resource users and managers need to further develop knowledge about the food and farming system, with its dominating feedback structures and complexities, and to test robust and integrated system-based solutions. This paper investigates how participatory system dynamics modeling can be adapted to groups at the community level with low or no formal educational background. The paper also analyses the refinement of workshop participants’ mental models as a consequence of a participatory system dynamics intervention. For this purpose, we ran two w…

How to measure students’ innovation competences in higher education : Evaluation of an assessment tool in authentic learning environments

2018

Abstract In all sectors of the economy, the importance of innovation is underlined. Although education plays a central role in the development of human innovation skills, several studies suggest that higher education institutions cannot fulfill these demands. In such, there is a need to update pedagogical practices and develop assessment tools to measure and develop a person’s innovation capacity. The aim of this study is to test and evaluate the functioning of the earlier developed assessment tool to measure students’ innovation competences in the authentic learning environments of Finnish higher education institutions. The electronic self-assessment questionnaire was distributed to studen…

Systems Thinking Research in the Twenty-First Century

2017

In this opinion article, the author aims to depict the state of systems thinking research through the lens of my own personal experience. His point of view is that of a relatively young scholar who has the privilege to be involved in the international systems thinking community in many ways. Indeed, in 2012 he established, with other colleagues, an academic society named Business Systems Laboratory (BSLab), which has rapidly become an important society for research into the application of systems thinking to society, business and organizations. Through his activity of organization of conferences and his editorial activity at the journals associated with BSLab (and recently as Editor-in-Chie…

Sustainability and Teaching in Higher Technological Education

2015

In this chapter, Sustainability and Teaching in Higher Technological Education, Tom V. Nilsen argues for technological education that sees technology in a holistic perspective. The chapter starts with World Commission on Environment and Development (Report of the world commission on environment and development: Our common future, 1987, New York, NY: United Nations) and moves on to engineering education. It is recognised that the implications for universities are radical. The idea of the Honest Broker is presented. Via Giddens and Habermas, and systems thinking, there are links to other disciplines which are discussed in other chapters.

Sunny Island. An Interactive Learning Environment to Promote Systems Thinking Education for Primary School Students

2017

To make the process of learning easier for students, schoolteachers are increasingly using Interactive Learning Environments (ILEs) in classrooms. The paper presents a system dynamics-based ILE called Sunny Island. The ILE has been designed to promote Systems Thinking (ST) education for primary school students. Through a funny fantasy tale - described in detail in a book that accompanies the ILE - students have the opportunity to discover and become familiar with the basic principles of ST, such as feedback, positive and negative causal influences, limits to growth, short and long term effects, counterintuitive behaviors, causes of policy resistances and dynamic complexity. The proposed ILE…

Applying systems thinking concepts in the analysis of knowledge sharing on WeChat.

2019

This research is intended to theoretically investigate and analyse the characteristics of WeChat and its effect on knowledge sharing through a systems thinking approach. As one of the most popular mobile social application in China, WeChat has social attributes and the functions of multimedia interaction platform and has been gradually used in knowledge management practice. On one hand, comparing with virtual communities of practice, WeChat provides a more open and individual environment which break free the shackles of workplace relations. On the other hand, as a user-operated media and instant messaging software, WeChat has dramatically different structure with academic social network sit…

Information systems and strategy design

1999

Abstract Strategic thinking forms a wide-ranking, complex area of thought. It also seems to be an extremely interesting and important field in both management practice and literature. Recently, the areas that the different functions (like accounting, marketing, production and information systems) of firm and strategic thinking have in common have been lively discussed. In this paper, the applicability of information systems thinking to strategic thinking is outlined. For that purpose, three modes of strategy-making are explicated: strategy-making as management process, as game-playing and as leadership. In each of these three modes, the strategy design phase and especially the essentials of…