In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

This chapter discusses leading problems linked to energy that the world is now confronting and to propose some ideas concerning possible solutions. Oil deserves special attention among all energy sources. Since the beginning of 1981, it has merely been continuing and enhancing the downward movement in consumption and prices caused by excessive rises, especially for light crudes such as those from Africa, and the slowing down of worldwide economic growth. Densely-populated oil-producing countries need to produce to live, to pay for their food and their equipment. If the economic growth of the industrialized countries were to be 4%, even if investment in the rational use of energy were pushed to the limit and the development of nonpetroleum energy sources were also pursued actively, it would be extremely difficult to prevent a sharp rise in prices. It is evident that it is absolutely necessary to pursue actively the development of coal, natural gas, and nuclear power if a physical shortage of energy is not to block economic growth.

World energy outlook

By Pierre Bourdieu (London: Routledge, 2010), xxx + 607 pp. £15.99 paper. A combination of social theory, statistical data, illustrations, and interviews, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judg...

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization

Over the last decades system dynamicists have experimented with approaches to achieve more involvement of their clients in the model building process. As a result the number of reports in the literature on the use of system dynamics as an organizational intervention tool has increased dramatically. From the literature we have identified 107 cases that provide details on the modeling process and the assessment of results. The cases show a wide variety in the way the interventions are reported and assessed. From a research point of view this is clearly an undesirable state of affairs. This article reports on a meta analysis of findings of these studies and tries to provide an overview of outcome studies on system dynamics interventions. It attempts to draw some preliminary conclusions on the effectiveness of system dynamics modeling interventions, to clarify differences in definitions of outcomes, and to provide guidelines for more standardized assessments and reports. Rather than remaining in the stage of single case descriptions, the latter will enable the accumulation of research results in the future, a prerequisite for institutional learning within the system dynamics community. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Group model building effectiveness: a review of assessment studies †

The authors use the term, ‘Group Model Building’ (GMB) (Richardson and Andersen, 1995; Vennix, 1996, 1999) to refer to a bundle of techniques used to construct system dynamics models working direct...

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Group model building: problem structuring, policy simulation and decision support

Group model building (GMB) is a participatory method for involving stakeholders in the process of developing system dynamics models. GMB has historically consisted of undocumented structured small-group exercises. This paper describes an effort to document GMB scripts called Scriptapedia, and how documented GMB scripts can be used to design more effective GMB sessions that address cultural and ideological barriers to collaboration. A case study of a project to develop a coordinated community response to domestic violence is used to illustrate the use of scripts for planning collaboration. The paper concludes with a discussion of potential limitations of scripts and implications for future research. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Group Model-Building 'Scripts' as a Collaborative Planning Tool

Group model building

An important objective of most system dynamics modeling projects is to support strategic decision making. This paper describes a (qualitative) modeling project where the primary goal was to establish consensus regarding the problem situation and commitment to the action necessary for change. The project was conducted with a group of mid-level managers of a company at the beginning of a period of organizational change. This group of managers engaged in a series of group model-building sessions, facilitated by the authors. Extensive evaluation of the project results indicates that consensus and commitment with regard to the problem have been established, but that the project was not successful in creating a full consensus on the course of action.

Etiënne A. J. A. Rouwette

Papers

Group model building effectiveness: a review of assessment studies †

Group model building: problem structuring, policy simulation and decision support

Group Model-Building 'Scripts' as a Collaborative Planning Tool

Group model building

Group model-building to facilitate organizational change: an exploratory study