Rerum cognoscere causas: PartⅡ - Opportunities generated by the agency/structure debate and suggestions for clarifying the social theoretic position of system dynamics

摘要

This is the second half of a two-part paper dealing with the social theoreticassumptions underlying system dynamics. It was concluded in the first half thatanalysing system dynamics using traditional, paradigm-based social theories ishighly problematic. An innovative and potentially fruitful resolution is now proposedto these problems. In the first section it is argued that in order to find an appropriate social theoretichome for system dynamics it is necessary to look to a key exchange in contemporarysocial science: the agency/structure debate. This debate aims to move beyond boththe theories based only on the actions of individual human agents, and those theorieswhich emphasise only structural constraints. Emerging from this debate are varioustheories which instead aim to unite the human agent view of the social realm withviews which concentrate solely on system structure. It is argued that system dynamicsis best viewed as being implicitly grounded in such theories.The main conclusion is therefore that system dynamics can contribute to animportant part of social thinking by providing a formal approach for explicatingsocial mechanisms. This conclusion is of general significance for system dynamics.However, the over-arching aim of the two-part paper is increase understanding ofsystem dynamics in related disciplines. Four suggestions are therefore offered forhow the system dynamics method might be extended further into the social sciences.Presented in the right way, the formal yet contingent feedback causality thinking ofsystem dynamics should diffuse widely in the social sciences and continue to make adistinctive and powerful contribution to them.