Unrecognized interdependencies in mental models—The case for taking feedback loops into account

Abstract

This article attempts to bridge two streams of research: on the one hand, system dynamics research investigates the “misperception of feedback” focusing on decision rules rather than mental models. On the other hand, mental model research in organizational and management studies does not take interdependencies into account. The article examines data from an interview‐based study with nine vineyard executives and finds that 47 of the 219 elicited variables belong to one or several of 49 feedback loops inherent in the structure of the elicited mental models. However, 44 of these loops are “dark”: They have not been recognized by the executives. Not taking loops into account increases the likelihood of misjudging the situation. It is concluded (a) that mental model research methods should account for loops in order to address the problem of dark loops (b) and that executives and researchers need elicitation tools that automatically detect and visualize loops.

Assessing the efficacy of group model building workshops in an applied setting through purposive text analysis

“…However, despite the high number of factors and causal statements mentioned per interviewee, only two of the individual models (CLDs) produced any feedback loops: one interviewee from South Ari (8 loops), and one from Kabarole (1 loop). This finding highlights the "dark loop" phenomenon most recently observed by Schaffernicht (2019), who argues that mental model research requires a more intentional analysis of feedback misperception. These results for individual models suggest that while interviewees in each context provided rich descriptions of the local systems that support RWSD sustainability, these narratives rarely describe a feedback phenomenon within the system, and even more rarely, a statement of dynamics.…”

Beyond Misperception–Two Types of Mental Model Errors in a Dynamic Decision Task

“…They argued that if the causal structure of the external situation contains feedback loops with stocks and flows, an accurate mental model of this system will contain the same type of elements. This definition is conceptually compatible with Rouse and Morris's influential elaboration of mental models (1986) and allows researchers to build on mainstream methods in organizational and management studies (Langfield-Smith and Wirth, 1992;Markóczy and Goldberg, 1995;Schaffernicht, 2017;Groesser, 2011, 2014) while putting interdependence into focus (Schaffernicht, 2019).…”

“…Groesser and Schaffernicht (2012) then proposed an operational definition with a data structure for representing MMDSs. However, only a few studies with a detailed examination of MMDSs have been published so far (for a discussion, see Schaffernicht, 2017Schaffernicht, , 2019. One reason for this scarcity may be than researchers consider selfreported language assertions as not sufficiently reliable for scientific research (Arango A., Castañeda A., and Olaya M., 2012).…”

Three Generic Policies for Sustained Market Growth Based on Two Interdependent Organizational Resources – A Simulation Study and Implications

“…If different policies can be the driver beneath a certain behavior, the ability to generate this behavior with one policy only proves that one has found one policy to yield this behavior, but not the policy behind the behavior. Seen from this angle, eliciting the mental models people can articulate is a feasible way to obtain data concerning the structural representation and the reasoning of individuals, as practiced in cognitive psychology [42][43][44][45], in organization studies [46,47] and systems research [48,49]. A particularly relevant question follows from the fact that "mental models of dynamic systems" [37] only describe the structure an individual recognizes, whereas "mental models of possibilities" as used in cognitive psychology [50] represent the reasoning, but traditionally related to events rather than dynamic behaviors: so, can both types of mental models be combined such as to study mentally represented structure as well as the reasoning?…”