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AbstractIt is critical to understand the impact of distinct interventions on the ongoing coronavirus disease pandemic. I develop a behavioral dynamic epidemic model for multifaceted policy analysis comprising endogenous virus transmission (from severe or mild/asymptomatic cases), social contacts, and case testing and reporting. Calibration of the system dynamics model to the ongoing outbreak (31 December 2019–15 May 2020) using multiple time series data (reported cases and deaths, performed tests, and social interaction proxies) from six countries (South Korea, Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, and the United States) informs an explanatory analysis of outbreak responses and postpeak strategies. Specifically, I demonstrate, first, how timing and efforts of testing‐capacity expansion and social‐contact reduction interplay to affect outbreak dynamics and can explain a large share of cross‐country variation in outbreak pathways. Second, absent at‐scale availability of pharmaceutical solutions, postpeak social contacts must remain well below prepandemic values. Third, proactive (targeted) interventions, when complementing general deconfinement readiness, can considerably increase admissible postpeak social contacts.© 2020 System Dynamics Society

AbstractWhy are organizations and markets slow to transform toward sustainability despite the abundant well‐recognized opportunities it provides? An important subset of the phenomena this question addresses involves decision‐makers recognizing the existence of opportunities but failing to undertake ambitious, effective, sufficient, or timely action. Building on existing research on capability traps, market formation, and managing sustainability, we focus on the forces constraining organizations from developing the capabilities and market infrastructures required for sustainability transformations. We characterize types of sustainability initiatives and, using causal loop diagramming, visualize structures that enable and constrain how organizations can navigate individually and collectively worse‐before‐better dynamics resulting from uncertain, nonlinear, and delayed returns. Being under day‐to‐day pressures and deeply intertwined within their environment, organizational actors find it difficult to recognize, undertake, maintain, and coordinate necessary efforts internally and externally. We discuss research implications and directions for future research on avoiding these traps and accelerating sustainability transformations. © 2023 The Authors. System Dynamics Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of System Dynamics Society.

AbstractSystem dynamics provides a powerful support mechanism for resolving problems in highly complex and dynamic contexts. Effectively building a system dynamics model in a client‐group environment is a challenging task, particularly with a heterogeneous clientele and a variety of stakeholders influencing the boundaries of the model. In such environments, understanding and formulating central concerns is as important as it is challenging. This article describes a group model building initiative designed to study the implications of various policies aimed at revitalizing the fishing industry in Gloucester, Massachusetts. While the iterative and interactive methods in this group modeling intervention helped fishermen and community members to communicate effectively with one another, define problems and improve their understanding of the critical interactions in the system, the resulting model was used to help the Gloucester Community Development Cooperation to communicate potential impacts of a prospective fish factory to a wider audience. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this article we examine the marketing representations of the Toyota Prius, the first 'green' mass-produced automobile. Drawing on an interpretive analysis of Prius print advertisements in Canadian publications between 2006–2011 and a matched sample of other automobile advertisements, we observe how the Prius advertisements invoke imagination and how this process is channelled, via the integration of text and images offered in the advertising space, to particular themes and ideas. Through the use of an ambiguous system of signs, audiences are invited to imagine and thereby co-create the significance of hybrid electric vehicles. Three areas of imagining are emphasized by the advertisement structure—nature, harmony and agency—and we analyze these imaginings as potential moments of knowledge creation about climate change. We examine how the activity of imagining in relation to these three areas influences viewers' knowledge and perception of climate change as well as their sense of responsibility for anthropogenic climate change. We discuss the consequences of using ambiguous messages to promote socially and politically charged products for consumers' understanding and imagination.

AbstractConstraints on production capacity adjustment present a strategic and operational problem for managers launching products when demand is uncertain. Stock‐outs can be costly if demand exceeds available product supply, as sales are deferred or lost when prospective customers are waitlisted. Recent research on diffusion under supply constraints has analyzed launch strategies to minimize the chance of stock‐outs. Others suggest that waitlisted buyers generate social exposure that can boost customer demand and shape the diffusion process. We develop a generalized model of new product diffusion under supply constraints that explicitly accounts for endogenous customer waitlisting and waitlist‐generated word‐of‐mouth. We estimate the model for a prominent example of waitlisting, the launch of the Toyota Prius hybrid‐electric vehicle in the U.S.A., finding evidence of positive word‐of‐mouth from waitlisted buyers. Inclusion of endogenous supply constraints and waitlisting also alters the estimated contribution of marketing and adopter word‐of‐mouth.Copyright © 2018 System Dynamics Society