MBAX 6007 Week 10 Draft Workshop Submission Example

Workshop Submission for the Final Model Paper: A Cover Note With Three Questions, the Draft Model Section and a Table Pairing Every Diagram Element With Its Paragraph

Student Name

Walden University

MBAX 6007: Complexity and Systems Thinking Dynamics

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Workshop Submission for the Final Model Paper: A Cover Note With Three Questions, the Draft Model Section and a Table Pairing Every Diagram Element With Its Paragraph

Cover Note to Peers

Thank you for reading this draft of the model section of my final paper on Hearthside Home Care, the invented agency whose aide numbers keep overshooting. Rather than general comments, I would be grateful for answers to three questions.

1. Is the referral memory loop, added in Week 7, explained clearly enough that you could redraw it from the text alone?

2. Are the delay marks on the stock and flow map consistent with the delay lengths stated in the paragraphs?

3. Does the paragraph on the pipeline-aware hiring rule explain why counting aides in screening and training stabilizes the roster, or does it only assert that it does?

Draft Model Section (Condensed)

In its current form, the model explains Hearthside's swing with two stocks of aides and one stock of referral memory. Aides enter a pipeline that combines screening and training and lasts about two months on average, then move into the active roster, from which they leave through quits. Quits start from 4 percent monthly and climb twice in each cycle: in surpluses, because short weekly hours push aides toward steadier jobs, and in shortages, because overtime builds fatigue. Each month managers hire enough to cover the quits they expect plus a share of whatever gap they saw a month earlier. They do not count the aides already in the pipeline.

Three feedback loops drive the behavior. The hiring loop is balancing: a shortage raises hiring, which eventually raises the roster. The overtime loop is reinforcing: a shortage raises overtime, overtime raises fatigue and fatigue raises quits, which deepens the shortage. The short-hours loop is balancing but overshoots: a surplus lowers hours, which raises quits and drains the surplus, sometimes below need. A fourth loop, added after peer discussion, runs through referral memory: refusing referrals during a shortage builds a memory among discharge planners that lowers referrals for months afterward.

Delays turn these loops into oscillation. The perception delay of about a month means managers act on old information; the pipeline delay of about two months means hires arrive late; and the resignation delay means aides leave weeks after their hours fall.

Reconciliation Table

Table 1

Diagram Elements and Their Explaining Paragraphs

Composite organization.

Three Problems the Table Caught

The table exposed three problems in the draft before peers saw it. First, the overtime spiral appeared on the causal diagram, labeled R1, with no paragraph explaining it at all. It had been explained in Week 2 and dropped during condensing. The revision adds one sentence, above, and shortens the paragraph on scenario results to keep the section within its length. Second, the pipeline delay was marked as ten weeks on the stock and flow map but described as two months in the text. Sterman (2000) stresses that a model's documentation must match its structure exactly, since a reader who finds one mismatch will doubt the rest. The text now gives about nine weeks, matching the screening and training lengths from the delay analysis, and the map is relabeled to agree. Third, the referral memory stock was described as rising but never as draining, which would imply that planners never forget. The revision adds forgetting as an outflow, with memory fading over roughly six months, a length the coordinators thought plausible but which is the least supported number in the model and is labeled as such.

One Variable, One Name

The draft text called the difference between need and roster "the shortage" in some places and "the staffing gap" in others, while the map used "staffing gap" throughout. A reader could reasonably think these were two different variables. The revision uses "staffing gap" everywhere and defines it once, as an auxiliary calculated from need and active roster. Richardson (2011) notes that ambiguity in naming is one of the commonest ways that causal reasoning goes wrong in system dynamics work.

What I Will Do With Your Answers

Answers to the first question will decide whether the referral loop needs a figure of its own. Answers to the third will decide whether the pipeline paragraph needs a short numerical illustration from the model, which I am currently inclined to add to the final version. Research on how people misread stocks and flows suggests that a worked example would help (Booth Sweeney & Sterman, 2000).

References

Booth Sweeney, L., & Sterman, J. D. (2000). Bathtub dynamics: Initial results of a systems thinking inventory. System Dynamics Review, 16(4), 249-286. https://doi.org/10.1002/sdr.198

Richardson, G. P. (2011). Reflections on the foundations of system dynamics. System Dynamics Review, 27(3), 219-243. https://doi.org/10.1002/sdr.462

Sterman, J. D. (2000). Business dynamics: Systems thinking and modeling for a complex world. Irwin/McGraw-Hill.