Understanding the complexity of the model formulation process: a protocol analysis approach

Formulation of a model involves organization of certain elements of reality into an abstract structure that exhibits features and characteristics of the reality. The formulation process is complex, and this paper explores that complexity by looking at five previously analyzed problem situations in the managerial domain. This is done in several steps. First, the existing model formulation support architectures are analyzed using structures–mechanisms–policies model to extract the characteristic attributes of the model formulation process. It is then argued that an integration of these attributes into an architecture, called integrated modeling architecture (IMA), would be useful in supporting the complexities of the model formulation process. The validity of such an architecture is also examined using the verbalization transcripts for the five problems mentioned above. Our protocol analysis shows that the IMA attributes can explain the complexities of the model formulation process.