Organized crime satisfies a demand for necessary social services in the absence of effective government institutions. This paper examines the rise of the Sicilian mafia. Using system dynamics, we model this system and test various policies to determine what factors have the greatest impact on...

A generic system embodies basic principles and insights that are common to a set of diverse cases and situations. For example, a generic system called quot;limits to growthquot; captures the constraints experienced by an organization due to the scarcity of an important resource. Its...

Background. Research shows that learning and task performance improve when participants in management exercises understand the structure of the system they control. However, the majority of business simulators are “black-boxes.”Aim. This article introduces structural debriefing, which is a...

This paper utilizes the dynastic cycle framework proposed in (K. Saeed & Pavlov, 2008) to explain the role of dissent in universities. By combining the dissent expression framework (Kassing, 2011) and the dynastic cycle structure, we construct a generic model for dissent in organizations. The...

Educational programs leading to degrees in system dynamics are rare and thus of critical importance to the future of the field of system dynamics. However, to a large extent such programs have not yet been made transparent to the system dynamics community as a whole. The present article...

This paper provides an example of a system dynamics model that incorporates soft variables. The model examines the challenges that a superpower faces while maintaining its position in the global economic system. The effects on aggregate welfare of the population at home and abroad, as well as,...