Winfried writes:
>But what if the desirable way that I try to accomplish is undesirable by
>my competitor, for example on the financial market. Let's just assume
>that I and my competitor are not naive (I think "sophisticated" is too
>much of a praise). The development of the system will become unstable and
>unpredictable.
I confess that I don't understand what you're saying, Winfried. I seem to
have lost the context. I'm going to guess at one meaning and respond to
it, but if I'm missing your point please let me know.
A good system dynamics model always struggles with the question of scope
-- what is to go "inside" and what "outside" the system being modeled. If
you are concerned with the market's (or a single competitor's) reactions
to your actions, then the model would have to include the market behavior
as part of what is being modeled. To the extent that the model captures
the mutual cause and effect relationships among your company and the
others in the market, nothing you do would cause "the system" to become
any more unpredictable -- the model would capture whatever stability or
instability your actions (and competitors' actions) would help create.
As to whether the "system" would be stable or unstable, that would depend
upon the specific system and the specific actions taken within it. Some
systems are very robust -- they tend to return to stability (after some
transient response) in the face of almost anything that can happen; others
are teetering on the edge of instability all the time and it only takes a
slight change to send them reeling toward oscillatory or accelerative
behavior.
One note: Just because a system may be unstable does not mean that the
instability is necessarily unpredictable. Even in chaotic systems there
can be attractors that maintain system behavior within a narrow range of
possible paths.
-- "John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>