Combining scenario planning and system dynamics : an application based study

Abstract

Informed policies and strategies (hereon policies) are important to any government or organisation. Information is used to inform policy development and make them more robust. Interventions can help identify and structure complex information and inform mental models to assist policy development. This work aims to combine scenario planning and system dynamics to inform policy development. Scenario planning is an approach that collects and structures information to assist developing policies for the future. However, it has flaws that can lead to problems with the scenarios they develop and ineffective or even maladaptive policies. Such flaws include its subjective nature and dependence on informed mental models, for which the field provides little formal guidance to address. System dynamics aims to inform peoples' mental models. It aims to uncover the endogenous causes behind the behaviour of a system. The approach employs techniques that encourage people to surface and question their mental models and formally tests them using mathematical models. System dynamics has flaws of its own: it is often misapplied, its goals and limitations miscommunicated, and its ability to address different systems questioned. This work aims to help scenario planning and system dynamics overcome their flaws by combining them in an applied approach. Five studies were conducted to test if system dynamics could inform scenario planning and to test the reverse was also true. The studies ranged from a predominantly scenario planning exercise with a industry federation in the United Kingdom, which involved minimal systems mapping, to a greater integration of the two approaches that was conducted with a community organisation. The studies developed a workshop based scenario planning approach that executed a series of activities to generate scenarios. The studies demonstrated that preliminary system maps of the scenarios were often of little use for developing further using system dynamics and, according to participants, these maps assisted little with scenario development. The studies identified the need to educate participants about system dynamics and the need for a specific targeted problem for a system mapping exercise. The studies exemplified how the two approaches can identify and provide novel information for the other. Mixed evidence was found regarding the mapping of systems observed in different scenarios and integrating these perspectives. These attempts to integrate the approaches also identified theoretical differences, including system dynamics' narrower focus and more specific view of causal relationships. These studies highlighted how scenario planning and system dynamics can be used to inform each other. In practice, effectively-executed system mapping and system dynamics modelling helped surface and test peoples' mental models, assisting scenario planning. Scenario planning, however, offered minimal assistance to system dynamics. The approaches offered each other mutual assistance, particularly with framing and preventing information filtering (exclusion), learning, and communication. This work highlights the limitations and benefits of integrating these approaches. With this understanding more work can now be conducted to take scenario planning and system dynamics forward and develop them as co-informing and co-supporting structures of policies for governments and organisations, both for the present and the future. Show more