ABSTRACT
This chapter was written by Dr. John D. Sterman, Associate Professor, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Copyright © John D. Sterman, 1988. An earlier version of this paper also appeared in Foresight and National Decisions: The Horseman and the Bureaucrat (Grant 1988). It is printed here with permission. The author wishes to acknowledge that many of the ideas expressed here emerged from discussions with or were first formulated by, among others, Jay Forrester, George Richardson, Peter Senge, and especially Donella Meadows, whose book Groping in the Dark (Meadows, Richardson, and Bruckmann 1982), was particularly helpful.
