Drifting the goals archetype: a systemic study

Abstract

Purpose

Managerial decision-making is an area of interest to both academia and practitioners. Researchers found that managers often fail to manage complex decision-making tasks and system thinkers assert that generic structures known as systems archetypes help them to a great deal in handling such situations. In this paper, it is demonstrated that decision makers resort to lowering of goal (quick-fix) in order to resolve the gap between the goal and current reality in the “drifting the goals” systems archetype.

Design/methodology/approach

A real-life case study is taken up to highlight the pitfalls of “drifting the goals” systems archetype for a decision situation in the Indian two-wheeler industry. System dynamics modeling is made use of to obtain the results.

Findings

The decision makers fail to realize the pitfall of lowering the goal to resolve the gap between the goal and current reality. It is seen that, irrespective of current less-than-desirable performance, managers adopting corrective actions other than lowering of goals perform better in the long run. Further, it is demonstrated that extending the boundary and experimentation results in designing a better service system and setting benchmarks.

Practical implications

The best possible way to avoid the pitfall is to hold the vision and not lower the long term goal. The managers must be aware of the pitfalls beforehand.

Originality/value

Systems thinking is important in complex decision-making tasks. Managers need to embrace long-term perspective in decision-making. This paper demonstrates the value of systems thinking in terms of a case study on the “drifting the goals” systems archetype.

Citation

Bagodi, V. and Mahanty, B. (2023), "Drifting the goals archetype: a systemic study", Kybernetes, Vol. 52 No. 4, pp. 1325-1350. https://doi.org/10.1108/K-05-2021-0395