Dr Nick Cheffins, from Peakhill Associates www.peakhill-associates.co.uk, has provide us with an illustrative document that refers to sustainability in the food supply chain. He proposes a model to close the loop between agriculture, food and renewable energy production. An application related to an attempt to establish a “mega dairy” at Nocton in Lincolnshire is also presented.
Follow this link to see the presentation (PDF): Closing the loop
An exploratory meeting about the potential development of a Lincoln-based research Special Interest Group (think tank) focused on sustainability issues took place last 24th of July at the Lincolnshire Leadership and Management Centre. The aim is to contribute to the creation and dissemination of knowledge on sustainable food chains from a local/regional perspective. This forum was focused on defining meaningful questions and developing ways to answer them.
Some of these questions initially identifed to explore facets of sustainability were:
• Which are the different understandings about sustainability: their contributions, limitations, and ways to support the former and mitigate the latter.
• Supply chains: the ecological impact, effective and efficient business models, social innovation, ways for (self-)organising different stakeholders.
• Food security: local autonomy vs. global dependence, maintaining and developing skills inside the (local) workforce.
• The impact of sustainability on professions and research disciplines.
For more information follow this link: http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/6240/
Coauthors: Eliseo Vilalta-Perdomo; Rebecca Herron
Abstract
In thinking about Information Systems (IS) it is quite usual to consider knowledge resources as something abstracted from those who use the knowledge. This suggests seeing knowledge as something that can be disengaged from a particular situation / action to become general advice. An alternative perspective is to consider collectives that act in certain ways as themselves being the information systems. These ‘information systems’ will change in response to their collective understanding of the need for (or possibilities of) action. Furthermore, these information systems may frequently recognise the need to create new actions in the light of changing experiences. This paper looks at one response to studying such information systems. The approach involves introducing a formal language into a collective (in this case introducing the concepts of Viable Systems Modelling into a crime-reduction partnership) and engaging the members of the collective in designing and testing this framework as co-researchers. The intention was to see if this exercise could help to make visible communication and organisational processes within the collective (the IS) and to stimulate its self-organisation. In particular, participants were encouraged to reflect on attenuation and amplification processes within their communications and feedback systems. The study was conducted in a small, industrial, English town with members of a cross-agency Crime Reduction Partnership. An alternative approach to Crime Reduction Partnership information development was also observed in another nearby City; the differences revealing further differences in the relationship between information and agency in both these contexts.
Keywords: Research Methodology; Human Information Systems; Collective Knowledge Acquisition; Performance Improvement; Viable Systems Modelling.
Status: Knowledge Management Research and Practice (Under review)
The intention of this paper is to discuss how to extend the use of System Dynamics (SD). The rationale to do the effort is its proved record to better inform decision making in complex environments. SD is a discipline helpful to recognize counterintuitive behaviors. By modeling and simulating different scenarios, complex situations can be studied and analyzed. Conceding that these activities may help on improving human action, the difficulty would strive on how to expand its use as it seems difficult to be caught by students, our future professionals. One possibility is to teach the discipline, another to show how to deal with complex situations by using SD. This paper elaborates on the latter by proposing an approach that looks at SD as a problem structuring method (PSM). Instances of this procedure are provided from a SD course delivered to undergraduate students in a Mexican university.
Keywords: OR education, system dynamics, problem structuring methods, problem solving
Status: The Journal of the Operational Research Society (Under review)
Vilalta-perdomo, Eliseo Luis and Montaudon-Tomas, Cynthia (2011) Impact of different modelling approaches to evaluate public policies: the case of entrepreneurship in Central Mexico. Keynotes and extended abstracts of the OR53, Operational Research Society. University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. September 2011. . pp. 5-10
Abstract
Different approaches can be used to model public policies. These models may be useful to evaluate such programs. Several of them are explored and illustrated through different entrepreneurship initiatives implemented in Central Mexico.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship, modelling, public policies evaluation, communities’ viability.