Dynamic modelling for re-engineering organizations

Dynamics is an essential characteristic of our society and of organizations. The turbulent developments in our society lead to the question of how organizations should be designed in such an environment. Both at the office and in the factory, what matters is the effectiveness of the workplaces. The physical and information processes in the organization must be efficiently and effectively coordinated and information ‘navel strings’ to other organizations must be offered. Such questions of design require a new approach to the development of organizations: dynamic modelling or, also, the dynamic designing of dynamic systems. The dynamic modelling approach constitutes a problem solving perspective on organization redesign. It aims to analyze and diagnose an organizations current situation with simulation and animation techniques, and subsequently identify and evaluate alternatives for change. This paper shows how dynamic modelling has been applied to a number of actual cases, and points at issues for future research.