Systems Thinking

Origin. Forrester's system dynamics; Meadows; Ashby's cybernetics.

Mechanism. Models behaviour as generated by structure: stocks, flows, delays, and balancing and reinforcing feedback loops. Counterintuitive system behaviour — policy resistance, oscillation, drift to low performance — follows from delay and feedback topology and is not explained by the intentions of any actor.

Procedure. Identify stocks and their flows. Identify feedback loops and label polarity. Locate delays; delays plus feedback produce oscillation. Find the leverage points, which per Meadows lie in goals, rules, and paradigms rather than in parameters.

Applies to. Recurrent behaviour that resists local intervention. Policy design.

Limitations. Qualitative causal-loop diagrams are unfalsifiable and can be drawn to support any conclusion. The discipline is in the quantitative simulation, which is where the method stops being cheap.