Problem:
Take a look at feedback loops in the U.S. army and. identify at least one balancing loop and one reinforcing loop. The ultimate goal of this assignment is to answer the following questions:
Q1. What are the effects of these feedback loops on organizational effectiveness over the short and long term?
Q2. What changes in strategy or operations would you recommend in light of your analysis?
Background Information:
While most of models of organizational diagnosis that we have been exposed to in this class recognize the existence of feedback loops, none of them really offer a thorough discussion of the complexity of feedback or how it can be used to promote organizational improvement and development. To get a better view of this topic, we turn to the work on systems thinking and organizational learning. Much of this literature is based on the work of Peter Senge whose seminal book The Fifth Discipline popularized the notion that organizations are capable of learning.
This first reading is quite long and reviews much of the work in the area of learning organizations. Read it all if you like, but the most relevant part of the paper for this course is part VI, which covers systems thinking:
Larsen, K., McInerney, C., Nyquist, C., Santos, A., & Silsbee, D. (1996) Learning Organizations (Part VI: Systems Thinking)
Gene Bellinger has assembled an impressive website that deals extensively with feedback loops and systems thinking. In this next reading, he explains how to graphically depict feedback loops to get a better idea of how one part of the system affects another. He distinguishes between reinforcing loops and balancing loops, which have different effects on the system as a whole.
Bellinger, G. (2004) Introduction to systems thinking.
In this next reading, Bellinger build on the idea of reinforcing and balancing loops to offer a model for how an analysis of feedback loops can translate into identifying problems which can then be addressed through the organization's strategic planning process.
Bellinger, G. (2004) theWay of systems.