MBAX 6007 Week 2 Causal Loop Diagram Paper Example

A First Causal Loop Diagram of Hearthside Home Care's Caregiver Swings: Eight Variables, Three Feedback Loops and the Places Where the Drawing Is Still Rough

Student Name

Walden University

MBAX 6007: Complexity and Systems Thinking Dynamics

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

A First Causal Loop Diagram of Hearthside Home Care's Caregiver Swings: Eight Variables, Three Feedback Loops and the Places Where the Drawing Is Still Rough

Purpose

Hearthside Home Care, a composite agency placing home-health aides with older adults in western Michigan, swings between too few aides and too many about once a year. This paper draws a first causal loop diagram of that swing. The question is not who is responsible but what structure produces the pattern. Sterman (2000) recommends starting a causal diagram from the behavior to be explained and drawing only the feedback needed to produce it; the diagram below has eight variables and three loops, and its rough edges are marked.

Amounts, Not Moods

The first draft used labels such as "low morale" and "bad hiring." They were replaced, because a causal diagram needs variables that can rise and fall, and a mood has no clear direction. "Low morale" became fatigue, an amount that overtime increases and rest reduces. "Bad hiring" became recruiting effort, the number of applicants the agency works to bring in each month. The eight variables are:

Table 1

Variables in the Diagram

Composite organization; variables named so each can be counted or estimated.

The Diagram in Words

The diagram is described here loop by loop; the drawing itself shows each arrow with a plus or minus sign and each loop with its label.

Loop B1, hiring to target, is balancing. When active caregivers fall below caregivers needed, the staffing gap grows (minus). A larger gap raises recruiting effort (plus), which, after screening and training, raises active caregivers (plus), closing the gap. This is the loop Hearthside's leaders believe they run, and it is how they describe their staffing: when we are short, we hire.

Loop R1, overtime that feeds itself, is reinforcing. A larger staffing gap raises overtime hours (plus), as the remaining aides cover open visits. Overtime raises fatigue (plus), fatigue raises quits (plus) and quits reduce active caregivers (minus), which widens the gap further. R1 explains why shortages deepen once they begin, faster than hiring can respond.

Loop B2, short hours then exits, is balancing in a surplus. When active caregivers exceed caregivers needed, the coordinator spreads the visits around and hours per caregiver fall (minus). Lower hours raise quits (minus), since aides leave for jobs with steadier pay. Quits reduce active caregivers and drain the surplus. B2 sometimes drains it further than intended, because aides keep leaving after hours have recovered.

Where the Swing Comes From

Each loop on its own would settle the agency at a stable roster. The swing comes from their interaction with delay. B1 acts slowly: an applicant takes about two months to reach active status. While B1 is still working, R1 deepens the shortage. When the hiring wave finally arrives, B1 has already over-recruited, B2 takes over and the surplus drains through quits, often below the target, which restarts the cycle. Meadows (2008) describes this pattern as a balancing loop with a delay, which tends to overshoot and oscillate rather than settle.

Where the Drawing Is Rough

Three parts of the diagram are marked as rough. First, the delay in B1 is drawn as a single mark on the arrow from recruiting effort to active caregivers, but it hides several steps, screening, credential checks and training, that will need their own treatment. Second, "staffing gap" is drawn as if it were a quantity that accumulates, when it is really a difference computed from two other variables; that will need correcting when the diagram becomes a stock and flow map. Third, fatigue is estimated, not measured, and its link to quits rests on what aides say in exit conversations rather than on data. Richardson (2011) notes that causal diagrams are useful for thinking but can mislead about accumulation, and the stock and flow map that follows is meant to repair that weakness.

How the Diagram Was Checked

Before the loops were labeled, each arrow was read aloud as a sentence to two experienced coordinators: "when overtime rises, fatigue rises," "when hours per caregiver fall, quits rise." Both coordinators accepted every sentence except one. They questioned whether recruiting effort responds to the gap at all, since in their memory the agency recruits only after a run of refused referrals, not whenever the gap opens. That doubt is recorded on the diagram as a question mark on the arrow, and it points to the perception delay the course will examine. The check took twenty minutes and is the closest the first draft comes to validation.

What the Diagram Suggests

Even in rough form, the diagram suggests that Hearthside's two seasonal explanations, weak recruiting in the spring and poor scheduling in the autumn, are both describing the same structure from different points in the cycle. Recruiting is not weak; it is late. Scheduling is not poor; it is responding to a surplus that the hiring wave created.

References

Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. Chelsea Green Publishing.

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.