systems often exhibit counterintuitive behavior. They confront us with the unexpected, and the idea of anticipating the unexpected is a
challenge to commonsense. The purpose of this contribution is to demonstrate the power of modeling and simulation in discovering the stuctures that generate counterintuitive behavior in and of organizations. The research question here is if and how these generative “mechanisms“ that produce unexpected behavior can be ascertained. If this can be achieved, then unexpected pattems of behavior become amenable to being anticipated as contingencies. If not, system behavior cannot be anticipated, and it remains in the dark. To answer our Research question, we revert to a case study of a health-care System that showed unexpected behavior.
While large causal models provide detailed insights to the analysts who develop them, General users are often challenged by their omplexity. Commonly, these models overwhelm the cognitive capacities of human beings. The inaccessibility of large causal models is particularly regrettable when they deliver valuable expertise and information that should be shared with other researchers and ractitioners. To address this issue, we propose a set of tools—so-called variety filters—to reduce model complexity and promote the accurate interpretation of their results. These filters encompass interpretive model partitioning, structural model partitioning and algorithmic detection of archetypal structures (ADAS). We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed variety filters using the World3–2003 Model—a simulation model of remarkable complexity. The filters drastically attenuate the complexity while enhancing the comprehension of the model. Based on our findings, we derive implications for the use of complex models and their interpretation.
Family business philanthropy operates at the intersection of family, business and society and is of crucial importance to social goods such as education, health and humanitarian aid around the world. For instance, corporations and foundations in the US, many which
are family-owned, donate over US$ 67 billion per year. In the UK, the top 100 family businesses and foundations contribute £908 million per year to societal causes and in Germany, family foundations donate around €490 million every year to philanthropic projects.
