Strategic Modelling and Business Dynamics: A Feedback Systems Approach

9.4. Conclusion

We have reviewed three distinctive public policy applications of strategic modelling that have taken us from decaying cities, to overstretched hospital doctors and idle fishing fleets. These applications are just a sample of public policy modelling that also spans topics such as environmental management (Ford, 1999), energy policy (Bunn & Larsen, 1997; Naill, 1992), and global warming (Fiddaman, 2002) to name just a few. Health care in particular is an area where system dynamics has proved effective and where managers welcome the joined-up thinking it provides. Studies that involve patient flows and money flows at a strategic level of aggregation are well suited to system dynamics modelling. Good examples are to be found in 'Health and Health Care Dynamics' (Dangerfield & Roberts, 1999) and in the Leading Edge series of the National Health Service confederation (Wolstenholme, 2006).

What unites all these important, practical problems is aptly captured in Jay Forrester's concise definition of the field:

System dynamics deals with how things change through time which includes most of what most people find important. It uses modelling and computer simulation to take the knowledge we already have about details in the world around us and to show why our social and physical systems behave the way they do. System dynamics demonstrates how most of our own decision-making policies are the cause of the problems that we usually blame on others, and how to identify policies ...