Sustainability Strategy Analysis For Globalization: A System Thinking Approach

The Approach of System Thinking while Dealing with Sustainability Changes

Discuss about the Sustainability Strategy Analysis for Globalization.

An entire system is a set of different parts that are interrelated and work towards a shared goal. System thinking approach is very much necessary to deal with different problems of sustainability as it overviews the problems and its related things from a macroscopic view (Mihelcic and Zimmerman 2014). In today’s life, the system thinking has been utilized by several business practitioners; however, this approach was first derived by Professor Jay Forrester in the year 1956. There is a major difference between the system thinking approach and the traditional thinking approach. The traditional thinking approach generally focuses on whatever has been studied, whereas the system thinking approach focuses on the interrelationship between different components of the system (Wiek et al. 2014). It cannot be denied that the world is now moving towards more globalization and industrialization. Therefore in this era, the business world is facing numerous complex situations in the upcoming years. The significant raise in the numbers of female employees involved in the senior executive roles in the Australian corporations is one of the serious and significant issues in this globalized era. Therefore this essay will critically discuss and support the arguments which favours that system thinking is always helpful while dealing with this wicked problem.

System thinking approach is a constructive process to deal with the issues of sustainability as this approach always considers these things from a closer point of view. While discussing with both the traditional analysis approach and system thinking approach, it can be easily derived that the system thinking approach help more in dealing with the complicated problems (Haines 2016). Therefore the system test is a significant part in the system thinking approach. There are three significant part of the system test, those are elements, purpose and functions. The first section of the system test is the purpose, for which the system thinking approach has been adopted. The second part of the test is the elements, which works on several essentials of the system thinking. The last part is the functions that refer to the interrelationship between the essentials. It can be said that the development of computer and the information technology have made significant modifications to the sustainable society (Nguyen and Bosch 2013). The technology has also provided computational solutions to several complicated problems in the world. However the sustainability challenges requires to be solved in a more intense manner. The system approach will be useful in recognizing the interrelationship between human behaviour, technology, societal approach and other environment impacts on the society. Therefore, in today’s society there is a continuous shift from the computational approach to the system thinking approach. The computational approach considers the usage of algorithms and programming while solving each and every complicated problem. This can be helpful on the one hand; however on the other hand the usage of computational thinking and using algorithms and calculations in every problem works as a limitation to the approach (Kunze, Wulfhorst and Minner 2016). There are always few problems which cannot be solved with the help of algorithms. For such problems individuals have to consider the system thinking approach. The wicked problem that has been considered in this essay is one of such problems which cannot be solved with computational thinking.

The Wicked Problem: Increasing Women’s participation in the Senior Executive Roles in Australian Corporations

The system thinking entirely focuses on the essential elements of the system that will interact with other essential elements within the system. It is the nature of the system thinking approach that solves the complicated problems in the society. For instance, it can be said that system thinking approach is very much helpful while dealing the issues that includes the interrelationships between diverse actors in order to solve the complicated problems or the frequent problems that have not been resolved after sincere efforts in the past. These sustainability challenges are even called adaptive challenges as there are already established processes and protocols which will not be applied in such situations (Glasson and Gibbons 2015). However there is not unified process or any approach in dealing with the wicked sustainability challenges. System thinking can be considered to be quite useful to change the earlier mental models while dealing with the issue of sustainability as it will contain few technologies, definite processes and a specified set of skills. Scholars have argued that mental models that use system thinking approach involves few particular steps such as, framing the problem while using a dynamic thinking process and the system as the cause thinking; making an understanding that uses operational thinking, generic thinking, and scientific thinking and a proper communication using the emphatic thinking (Martinuzzi, Sedlacko and Jaeger 2016). 

The problems that are considered to be the wicked problems are generally complex in nature, unstable and have no clear solution to it. The issue of more women participating in the leadership roles in the Australian Corporations can be considered as a wicked problem as it is one of the most complex problems, not only in Australia, but also all around the world. Despite several evidences of the companies that the companies with more percentages of women in their workforce as performing in leadership jobs perform a lot better, especially in the financial matters, the upper stratums of the corporate world of Australia still remain male dominated (Bruni, Gherardi and Poggio 2014). After assessing the benefits of gender diversity, the organizations need to be meritocratic. However the definition of who has sufficient merit to get promoted and who does not does not occur excluding the gender bias and subjectivity that has always remained challenging in the practice. These have more occurrences especially when it comes to the promotions or appointing women in the senior executive roles.

Application of the System Thinking Approach to Deal with the Problem

Promotions should be done based on an unbiased evaluation of both the future potential of the individual that can be helpful in meeting the needs of the organization and their record of part performance. However, there can always be an issue with this assessment, as the past performance can be easily evaluated, but the assessment of the future potential is quite subjective and this is where the biased judgments occur. Therefore, it will not be much surprising if the meritocracy can be implemented and biases can be minimized, it will enhance the progress of the women in the senior leadership. However, it is always an uncomfortable truth that men still remain in the majority by the factor of six of the top executives in most of the Australian organizations (Wajcman 2013). The Workplace Gender Equality Agency has found in their research that while around thirty four percent of the senior managers i the corporate world are women, only sixteen percent CEOs are women especially in the private sector organizations. However, the public sector of Australia presents a worse scenario, where only five percent of the CEOs are women. Therefore if any kind of significant changes are to see in such statistics and corporate situation, the decision makers needs to question their own mental model or the thinking process and hold onto new behaviours and hire more qualified women into the top executive levels in the Australian organizations (Klettner, Clarke and Boersma 2016). This may also indicate to hiring someone, who is entirely different from the previous employees. However, this is the most significant reason in hiring more male employees in the top executive roles, as to the management appointing a woman to a senior position seems to be risky than to appoint a man. 

System thinking can offer numerous ways while dealing with the complicacy of the issue with increasing the numbers of women in the senior role and it will be an entirely new approach to the decision makers in the management. The system approach has already been suitable in dealing with the complex issues in the business world (Glasson and Gibbons 2015). The System approach will view this related issues from a much broader viewpoint to find out whether there is any interconnected links between the levels.

A system thinking approach generally considers the significance of the situation and the circumstances under which the particular decision has been taken and the influence of the situations during the time of implementation. While a problem is being dealt under the system thinking approach, even a small change in one of the essential elements can have a huge impact on the rest and there can be a massive change in the decision. While dealing with this specific issue the management of such organization need to assess current scenario of the female employees in top positions. Generally it is more obvious that the concerned decision makers will feel more comfortable in employing or promoting someone who is similar to themselves (Bocken et al. 2014). Most of the decision makers in the management are male employees, therefore they also feel comfortable in appointing someone who have appointed in such roles in the past. However, the continuous scarcity of female employees in the senior positions indicates less female role models to be referred for the decision makers. Therefore, promoting or appointing a female employee in a senior position that may be hold by a male employee, needs a more careful and objective assessment of the attributes, skills and the experiences regardless of gender (Sheridan, Ross-Smith and Lord 2014). Therefore in such situations, system thinking approach will benefit the organizational decision as there can be a systematic process of evaluating all the components that are involved in the decision making.

However, it is always comes as a challenge for any human being to overcome all the biases, whether it is unconscious or conscious, it has some amount of impact on the decisions. The previous researches over this matter has indicated that while appointing an executive or a manager, the decision makers in the management most of the times interpret the merit as the past experiences and generally that ends up being the people who think and act like the people in the management. However, the world has shifted from that idea far ago, therefore this is not supposed to work anymore. Therefore to be a more agile and consumer centric organizations, the management will need more versatile, broad minded and flexible people in the workforce who can have a clear approach towards the future requirements of the organization (Adapa, Rindfleish and Sheridan 2016). Therefore, in such situations, system thinking approach will be very much helpful. It is also important to have a circumstances where the increasing in the numbers of women employees in the top executive roles as a wicked problem not as a simpler problem.

However there are several other arguments that have opposed the relevance of the system thinking approach. Even if it has been argued that system thinking approach can solve the wicked problems, there are some researchers who have also argued that this approach basically considers the ideology of the technically efficient people or the planners. Therefore it would be difficult to deal with this specific gender bias issue following this approach. Another criticism of the approach says that the system thinking approach is a time consuming procedure, as it needs to introspect all the minor issues that are related with the issue. Therefore an organization with urgency of recruiting senior employees or having a load of recruitment process will not be able to follow this approach (Kunze, Wulfhorst and Minner 2016). However, if the organizations need to increase the number of female employees within their workforce, they need to value all the minor and microscopic issues that are related with the problem.

Conclusion

There are other criticisms regarding this approach where the scholars claim that the approach only considers the cybernetics model, therefore it will only consider the mechanistic model. It is also a fact that even if system thinking deals with the interaction between several elements, but it does not specify the nature if the particular interdependency. Therefore, I will agree to the statement of the essay that system thinking process is significant but there should always be experts who have the capability of understanding the mathematical model of the approach and numerous tools that can be used in the thinking process. Including this approach will enable the decision makers to see the sustainability challenges from a pluralistic and complex point of view.

Reference List and Bibliography

Adapa, S., Rindfleish, J. and Sheridan, A., 2016. ‘Doing gender’in a regional context: Explaining women’s absence from senior roles in regional accounting firms in Australia. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 35, pp.100-110.

Bocken, N.M.P., Short, S.W., Rana, P. and Evans, S., 2014. A literature and practice review to develop sustainable business model archetypes. Journal of cleaner production, 65, pp.42-56.

Bruni, A., Gherardi, S. and Poggio, B., 2014. Gender and entrepreneurship: An ethnographic approach. Routledge.

Glasson, J. and Gibbons, P., 2015. Understanding the context of the organisation: adopting a systems thinking approach to asset management.

Haines, S., 2016. The systems thinking approach to strategic planning and management. CRC Press.

Hodgson, A. and Midgley, G., 2015, January. Bringing foresight into systems thinking: a three horizon approach. In Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the ISSS-2014 United States (Vol. 1, No. 1).

Klettner, A., Clarke, T. and Boersma, M., 2016. Strategic and regulatory approaches to increasing women in leadership: multilevel targets and mandatory quotas as levers for cultural change. Journal of Business Ethics, 133(3), pp.395-419.

Kunze, O., Wulfhorst, G. and Minner, S., 2016. Applying systems thinking to city logistics: A qualitative (and quantitative) approach to model interdependencies of decisions by various stakeholders and their impact on city logistics. Transportation Research Procedia, 12, pp.692-706.

Martinuzzi, A., Sedlacko, M. and Jaeger, J., 2016. Linking sustainable consumption and growth debates following a systems-thinking approach. Knowledge Brokerage for Sustainable Development: Innovative Tools for Increasing Research Impact and Promoting Evidence-Based Policy Making, p.251.

Mihelcic, J.R. and Zimmerman, J.B., 2014. Environmental engineering: Fundamentals, sustainability, design. Wiley Global Education.

Miller, T.R., Wiek, A., Sarewitz, D., Robinson, J., Olsson, L., Kriebel, D. and Loorbach, D., 2014. The future of sustainability science: a solutions-oriented research agenda. Sustainability science, 9(2), pp.239-246.

Nguyen, N.C. and Bosch, O.J., 2013. A systems thinking approach to identify leverage points for sustainability: a case study in the Cat Ba Biosphere Reserve, Vietnam. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 30(2), pp.104-115.

Savery, J.R., 2015. Overview of problem-based learning: Definitions and distinctions. Essential readings in problem-based learning: Exploring and extending the legacy of Howard S. Barrows, pp.5-15.

Sheridan, A., Ross-Smith, A. and Lord, L., 2014. Institutional influences on women’s representation on corporate boards: An Australian case study. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 33(2), pp.140-159.

Wajcman, J., 2013. Managing like a man: Women and men in corporate management. John Wiley & Sons.

Wiek, A., Xiong, A., Brundiers, K. and van der Leeuw, S., 2014. Integrating problem-and project-based learning into sustainability programs: A case study on the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 15(4), pp.431-449.