These are the tasks where (i) series of decision vs. a single decision are made, (ii) the decisions are interdependent, and (iii) task systems variables related through feedback processes. For instance, managing a health-care facility, emergency decision making, and managing of ambulance fleet are all dynamic tasks.
Published in Chapter:
System Dynamics Based Learning Environments
Hassan Qudrat-Ullah (York University, Canada)
Copyright: © 2008
|Pages: 4
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-881-9.ch129
Abstract
Managing a public sector organization is a highly complex task involving multiple stakeholders coupled with informational and resource material flows. Decision making in such complex tasks, for example heath-care system, presents challenges. On one hand, the complexity of public sector organizations does not lend itself well to real-world trial and error approach. Practical, political, and/or ethical constraints often restrict any experimentation with many real-world phenomena such as medical decision-making, hazardwaste management, climate change, and so forth. On the other hand, most of the real-world “decisions and their consequences” are hardly related in both time and space, which makes learning even harder to occur (Hogarth, 1981; Sterman, 1989). Recent advancements in computer technology, together with developments in system dynamics simulation methods, provide a potential solution that involves design and development of the decision support systems to aid decision making in complex public sector systems (Qudrat-Ullah, 2005). In this paper we argue that system- dynamics-based interactive learning environments (SDILEs) could serve as an effective decision support system for public sector management.