What is Causal Loop Diagram (CLD)

Historically, diagrammatic representations of processes have been widely used to effectively communicate complex and interrelated ideas and concepts (Albarn & Smith, 1977; Elder, 1992). Business processes are no exception. As businesses (and consequently business processes) became more complex, the diagram, with its ability to combine “verbal, numerical and visual functions with analytic and associative processes of thought” (Albarn & Smith), became an essential tool in the array of instruments used by business analysts and modelers (Clemen & Reilly, 2001; Davis, 2001; Elder; Howard & Matheson, 1989; Keller & Teufel, 1998; Kirkwood, 1998/2001; Klaus, Rosemann, & Gable, 2000; Kros, 2001; Nuttgens, Field, & Zimmerman, 1998; Scheer, 1999, 2000). In this article, we review a unified approach to the use of diagrams for business process and decision modeling in the context of decision support. Modeling features that can be regarded as relative weaknesses for one class of diagrams (e.g., decision modeling diagrams) are, in fact, the strong points for the other suggested class (e.g., process modeling diagrams). It is therefore natural to expect that a suitable combination of process and decision modeling approaches would increase the power of the resulting diagram as an effective tool for business analysis and modeling.