Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

System dynamics in MBA education at London Business School

1999; Palgrave Macmillan; Volume: 50; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1057/palgrave.jors.2600736

1476-9360

John Morecroft,

Business Strategy and Innovation

In the late 1980s and early 1990s an academic team fonned at London Business School with shared interests in system dynamics and business modelling. In 1986 John Morecroft joined the School after 10 years with MIT's system dynamics group. Ann van Ackere arrived at the School in 1987 with a PhD from Stanford and expertise in both simulation and queuing systems. Erik Larsen arrived soon after from Copenhagen Business School, nearing completion of his PhD on dynamics and complexity and with developing interests in computational organisational theory. Kim Warren joined the faculty in 1990 with a decade of commercial experience in Whitbread plc and a keen insight into the practicalities of business dynamics. Paul Langley joined the PhD programme in 1991 with a background in computer science from Cambridge University and a talent and passion for gaming simulators, interactive learning environments and interface design. Alessandro Lomi joined the School in 1991 with a PhD from Cornell and expertise in organisation theory and quantitative methods for social research. This team collaborated throughout the 1990s, developing a portfolio of courses and microworlds that are now woven into management education at London Business School and are being adopted elsewhere.a,b The courses allow students to acquire the various skills that we believe good system dynamicists should possess and that leading organisations are already seeking. Only one of the courses is recognisably a modelling course. The others span the conventional subject areas of decision sciences and strategy, allowing students a variety of ways to connect feedback modelling and simulation into the rest of their programme. This article reviews the courses on offer and then explains how they contribute to developing core thinking skills for system dynamics. The focus here is on the MBA programme. However, the same courses are optional electives in the School's long-established and highly regarded PhD programmec. In addition, two of the courses, Strategic