REPLY Stock and flow diagrams of Senge Archetypes (SD6091)

[George Richardson gpr albany.edu]

Posted by  George Richardson <gpr at albany.edu>
Years ago, I assigned one of my doctoral seminars the task(s) of  building 
formal models of all the archetypes in the Fifth Discipline  and in the 
Pegasus publications by Dan Kim.  It was a revealing  exercise.

Some are trivial, e.g., growth to a limit or escalation.  Some are  
hard, e.g., fixes that fail is difficult because it is far from clear  
what might a (the?) stock in the simple system.  One gets different  
results depending on what one takes for the stock.  Some are  impossible, 
I think, e.g., Senge's loops for the tragedy of the  commons don't seem 
to capture the dynamics of such tragedies.

I could search my records for the results of the seminar if you like,  
but others may be able to come up with such models quicker from their  
work.

George P. Richardson
Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy
University at Albany - SUNY, Albany, NY 12222 
Posted by  George Richardson <gpr at albany.edu>
posting date  Wed, 6 Dec 2006 09:28:16 -0500