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Modeling: Archetypes vs. Stock & Flow
From SystemsWiki
I have come to understand from a number of sources that there exists some controversy regarding the basis of model development. As I understand it there are those that seem to feel there is great value in beginning with the Archetypes and elaborating them as warranted by the actual environment being modeled. And, there seem to be those that contend that it is better to begin with the basic Stock & Flow components and build the model from essentially nothing but an understanding of the environment being modeled. So which is best? Yes, you guessed it, "It Depends!"
Does the value of something flow from what it is, or what it accomplishes? What I offer here is somewhat of an autobiographical journey to whatever level of understanding I now possess, on my way to whatever is to follow.
It seems there has always been a fascination for the pursuit of understanding how things work. And it seems that for many years the pursuit was most misguided. As I now look back I find that everything was viewed as a machine with parts to be understood which would provide an understanding of how all the parts worked together. I followed the Bacon, Descartes, Newton mechanistic paradigm without knowledge of it.
In college I studied Physics with a passion as it seemed to fit right in with my mindset. Everything seemed to make so much sense. In the process I happened across Stafford Beer's "Platform for Change." It fascinated me, yet being distracted by other things, nothing that I was aware of became of it for many years.
In the late 80's I happened across a copy of Stella and it seemed interesting, yet being that it was not perceived to be much in line with my then current line of work, Management, Marketing, & Strategic Management, I rather let it pass. Then in 1990 I happened across a copy of Senge's "The Fifth Discipline", which I devoured with a passion, and then did nothing with it. In 1991 I read Senge's book again, convinced someone to shell out the money and buy me a copy of ithink, and still I did nothing with it. I guess sometimes things just have to cook a while.
You may find it hard to fathom, yet I read Senge's book again in 1992 and began to get somewhat interested in the references he cited. And references lead to references. So I read the works of Robert Fritz, David Bohm, Donnella Meadows, Jay Forrester, Kenneth Boulding, Fritjof Capra, Gregory Bateson, Chris Argyris, Thomas Kuhn, Ervin Laszlo, James Lovelock, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Eric Jantsch, and many more I don't remember at the moment. Something was brewing and even though I didn't know why I seemed to have an insatiable appetite for something.
Somewhere amongst all this reading I ran across Mark Davidson's, "Uncommon Sense: The Life and Thought of Ludwig von Bertalanffy," and things have not been the same since. Amidst a discussion of the principle of emergence was presented an example so obvious I almost missed it, "One can study hydrogen and oxygen in isolation for an eternity and never discover the characteristic of wetness. Only when studying them as a system in the form of water will one experience the characteristic of wetness." At this moment it seemed that about 15 years of bits and pieces wove themself together in a single coherent fabric of meaning. In an instant everything seemed to make so much sense. I suppose this might have been a personal enlightenment which may not make much sense to others, which is quite ok.
So what does all this have to do with Archetypes vs. Stocks & Flows? If I were now to build models with only an understanding of Stocks & Flows I would construct very linear objective models with no awareness of what was missing, because I wouldn't know what I didn't know. What the Archetypes now offer me is a set of very tangible examples of the connectedness of things. Nothing is quite as simple as A causes B. So now I look for feedback loops I would never have considered existed, and yet they were there and exhibited influence.
As an aside, what the Archetypes also offer is a substantiation of Bertalanffy's initial premise for the foundation of General Systems Theory, which would have been General Systems Teaching, were it not for a translation error. Bertalanffy believed there were a set of fundamental structures which operated in the same fashion across all disciplines. And, if one learned these fundamental structures, when they moved from one discipline to another they wouldn't have to relearn everything from the beginning, but rather simply learn the specifics of these structures within the new discipline. Initially I thought this to be very profound, and as I contemplated the idea it seemed that if the Universe is a single system, this premise should be obvious. Of course it's almost always easier to describe the answer once you've seen it.
Getting back to models and non-obvious feedbacks. The following model developed in ExtendSim is offered as an example. It is a very simplistic model of an organization that processes membership applications.
This organization employs 70 people who received about 1,500 membership applications a day. The average application processing rate is 2.8 forms per hour. Given that on any particular day there are 5 to 10 people out of the office, received applications can be anywhere from 500 to 3,000, and productivity can be all over the map, the organization should not be able to process the number of applications it continues to complete. So how does this happen? Looking in the box rather than at it produces a somewhat different view.
In the midst of this model there is a feedback called "Backlog Fact". This essentially represents the effect the backlog has on the productivity of the organization.
The organization has a belief as to what is an acceptable backlog level. When the backlog is below the acceptable level productivity declines. When the backlog exceeds the acceptable level productivity increases. The system adjusts based on what it believes. And if one endeavors to drastically alter the operation of this system without accounting for the belief structure in operation, failure is most likely.
The Archetypes provided me with a basis for understanding which enabled the use of Stocks & Flows to construct the representation, which promoted understanding, which.... Maybe you guessed it, we have but one more chicken and egg scenario. One without the other makes no sense whatsoever, and you knew this, didn't you?
[edit] References
- Argyris, Chris (1982) Reason, Learning and Action: Individual and Organizational. Jossey-Bass
- Bateson, Gregory (1988) Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. Bantam
- Beer, Stafford (1975) A Platform for Change. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
- Bertalanffy, Ludwig von (1975) Perspectives on General Systems Theory. Braziller
- Bohm, David (1984) Wholeness and the Implicate Order
- Boulding, Kenneth E. (1985) The World as a Total System. Sage Publications
- Capra, Fritjof (1975) The Tao of Physics, Shambhala
- Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1994) The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Milennium. Harper Collins
- Davidson, Mark (1983) Uncommon Sense: The Life and Thought of Ludwig von Bertalanffy. J. P. Tarcher, Inc.
- Forrester, Jay W. (1971) Counter Intuitive Behavior of Social Systems
- Forrester, Jay W. (1994) System Dynamics, Systems Thinking, and Soft OR. System Dynamics Review. Summer 199. Vol. 10, No. 2.
- Fritz, Robert (1984) The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your own Life. Ballantine Books
- Jantsch, Eric (1980) The Self Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications, Pergamon Press
- Kuhn, Thomas (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press.
- Laszlo, Ervin (1972) The Systems View of the World, Braziller
- Lovelock, J. E. (1979) Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, Oxford University Press
- Meadows, Donella H. (2008) Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT
- Senge, Peter (1990) The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization, Doubleday Currency
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