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Hyperconnectivity and supercooperation among partners within the mobile value chain are crucial factors for sustainable growth of the mobile ecosystem. This study aims to identify the complex structure of hyperconnectivity and supercooperation underlying revenue sharing practices and the actions and reactions of Chinese mobile video triads.

This study uses the causal loop diagram and system dynamics simulation to demonstrate the feedback causal structure wherein the revenue sharing (RS) rule adjustments trigger interactions among participants (e.g., MNOs, SPs and CPs) in mobile video service triads, leading to fluctuations in the number of mobile video users and total revenue in the mobile video value chain.

Change of RS rules among value chain participants is an incentive for achieving the sustainability of the mobile ecosystem, as examined using a system dynamics (SD) simulation. However, from the perspective of a tri-partite mobile value chain, the “accidental adversary” system archetype caused by adjustment of RS rules has an unintended negative impact on counterparts in the mobile ecosystem value chain.

This study analyzes a complex feedback causal structure based on structural interdependencies among growth, limiting and relaxing loops in the Chinese mobile video ecosystem. The result of SD simulation suggests strategic alternatives such as the “growth and underinvestment” systems archetype to overcome “limits to growth”. Moreover, this study explores the accidental adversary archetype in complex and complicated mobile service triads as an impediment to achieving sustainability of the mobile ecosystem.

Some of the objectives and working tools of a new area of study, tentatively called Theory of Strategies, are described. It is based on the methodology of artificial intelligence, decision theory, operations research and digital gaming. The latter refers to computing activity that incorporates model building, simulation and learning programs in conflict situations. We also discuss three long‐term projects which aim at automatically analyzing and synthesizing strategies.

Morality is primarily a system of values, meanings, convictions, beliefs, principles, and drivers of good behavior and good outcomes in any organization. Using systems thinking concepts and applications introduced and developed during the last 50 years or so by various scholars from MIT, Stanford, and Wharton, such as Chris Argyris, Russell Ackoff, G. K. Forrester, Peter Senge, Stephen Covey, and Jim Collins, this chapter seeks to explore various past and contemporary market systems and challenges in terms of specific inputs, processes, and outputs. Systems thinking reckons everything in the cosmos (usually classified as subjects, objects, properties, and events) as a system (composed of two or more interactive parts with individual and interactive effects) that is connected to every other system in the universe. Various systems thinking laws and archetypes that have been developed thus far by systems thinkers will be introduced in order to identify basic patterns, structures, and constraints of human thinking and reasoning that create market phenomena. The academic and managerial challenge is to identify, explore, and capitalize such nonobvious connections for creating and developing new markets and corporate growth opportunities in the highly turbulent markets of today. In a globalized, digitized, and networked planet and universe, systems thinking is a very effective tool for analyzing turbulent market systems holistically and in an inclusive and integrated manner, with their specific inputs, processes, and outcomes. Several contemporary market cases will be included to illustrate the contents of this chapter.

Systems thinking calls for a shift of our mindset from seeing just parts to seeing the whole reality in its structured dynamic unity and interconnectedness. Systems thinking fosters a sensibility to see subtle connections between components and parts of reality, especially the free enterprise capitalist system (FECS). It enables us to see ourselves as active participants or partners of FECS and not mere induced factors of its production–distribution–consumption processes. Systems thinking seeks to identify the economic “structures” that underlie complex situations in FECS that bring about high versus low leveraged changes. A system is strengthened and reinforced by feedback of reciprocal exchanges that makes the system alive, transparent, human, and humanizing.

In Part I, we explore basic laws or patterns of behaviors as understood by systems thinking; in Part II we examine the basic archetypes or structured behaviors of systems thinking; in both parts we strive to see reality through the lens of critical thinking to help us understand patterns and structures of behavior among systems and their component parts. In conclusion, we argue for compatibility and complementarity of critical thinking and systems thinking to identify and resolve management problems created by our flawed thinking, and sedimented by our wanton assumptions, presumptions, suppositions and presuppositions, biases, and prejudices. Such thinking will also identify unnecessary economic and political structures of the self-serving policies we create, which imprison us.

Internationally, change in healthcare is often a result of a knee jerk reaction to high‐profile adverse events. Alternatively, change is driven by a reductionist set of targets and indicators, which do not reflect the complexity of hospitals. This paper posits that hospitals would benefit from promoting organisational learning, and that system archetypes offer a mechanism for achieving this. It seeks to examine the application of healthcare system archetypes in an Australian hospital.

Archetypes do not describe any one problem specifically. They describe families of problems generically. Their value comes from the insights they offer into the dynamic interaction of complex systems. As part of a suite of tools, they are extremely valuable in developing broad understandings about the hospital and its environment.

Diagnostically, archetypes helped the hospital managers recognize patterns of behaviour that are already present in their organizations. They served as the means for gaining insight into the underlying systems structures from which the archetypal behaviour emerges. The application of system archetypes to the strategic analysis of the hospital case reveals that it is possible to identify loop holes in management's strategic thinking processes and it is possible to defy these fallacies during policy implementation as illustrated by the results of the archetype simulation model. In this study, hospital executives found that policy modification helped to avoid such pitfalls and avoid potentially cost prohibitive learning had these policies been implemented in practice.

The paper demonstrates how system archetypes were deployed within a hospital to improve organizational learning, and provides an approach that may be deployed in other large complex health care organisations.

The ageing and disabled population is fast growing, which emphasises the need to effectively modify current homes and environments to support healthy ageing and increasingly diverse health needs. This paper aims to bring together findings and analyses from three adaptations-focussed projects, drawing on perspectives from key stakeholders alongside the lived experiences of service users acquiring adaptations.

Following an Adaptations Framework developed from interviews and focus groups with older people and key stakeholders, the paper discusses barriers experienced by older people and front-line workers in receiving and delivering adaptations through all stages of the process.

This paper reveals how experiences around adaptations might diverge with unseen, hidden investment and need amongst individuals, and how conceptual and cost-focussed evidence gaps impact wider understandings of adaptations delivery. In so doing, this paper highlights how the adaptations process is perceived as a “fight” that does not work smoothly for either those delivering or receiving adaptations services.

The paper suggests a systematic failure such that the adaptations process needs to be rehauled, reset and prioritised within social and public policy if the housing, health and social care sectors are to support healthy ageing and prepare for the future ageing population.

The paper brings together insights from key stakeholders alongside service users' experiences of adaptations to highlight key policy drivers and barriers to accessing and delivering adaptations.

Accepting the assumption that our intelligence depends on the ability to construct models which may allow us to acquire, update and transmit our knowledge, this paper aims to highlight the role of Systems Thinking in developing the “intelligence” of managers for all types and sizes of organization.

Four relevant contributions for improving the “intelligence” of managers will be examined: the ability to understand and model dynamic systems, the structure of Control Systems, the rules of the decision-making process and the identification of systems archetypes.

The paper will show that Systems Thinking, through the logic of Control Systems, offers managers a comprehensive representation of the problem-solving and decision-making processes, teaching them how to distinguish problems from symptoms and to acquire a leverage effect. Additionally, Senge’s system archetypes will be presented and new archetypes will be added to Senge’s list.

The viability of every organization and its effective resilience and survival make it more than ever necessary for managers to adopt Systems Thinking, not only as a technique but also primarily as a discipline for efficient and effective thinking, learning, communication and explanation with regard to the dynamics of the world.

The message of the paper is that by continually applying the rules and language of Systems Thinking, managers develop the capability to continually adapt their models to the dynamics of the world, increase their learning capacity and better gauge their consequent judgments, decisions and behavior, thereby removing the mental impediments to intelligence (inappropriate mental models, defensive routines, judgmental biases, rules, etc.).

Facility/facilities management’s (FM) continuing struggle with its search for a strategic identity is attested by publications of many leading authorities in the field. Some advocates of the alignment of strategic management with the real estate of facilities resource argue for new terms, for example infrastructure management or real estate asset management. This paper argues a different approach. FM is considered as a replicating memetic discourse; one that has traded the original strategic vision of the discipline’s founders for wider spread. To close the gap between strategic business alignment and operational management FM must learn to consider its performance with language and measures relevant to a particular business sector. While one can argue that core businesses should change the language in which they speak of FM, the blunt assertion is that most of the effort must be the other way. The alternative is that some other discourse will capture the strategic niche.