Analysis of chapter 5 and 6 assignment questions with references

¶ … intentions have been brewed by quite a few instances throughout human history. Sometimes, good intentions are tailored to increase health awareness amongst kids but they can backfire by eliminating some of the key nutrients for them, like saturated and other forms of fat, as the good intention was not followed by thorough and logical support (Senge, 1990). The most recent good intentions that one can see has been around environmental concerns more so than anything else. The environmental concerns have led many industrialists and politicians to step up and take notice of the problem-solution-problem structure as most good intentions to solve environmental concerns are not panning out to be practically favorable. In this paper, the focus will be on the current situation of the financial depression that the global economy is going through and pick an aspect out from that.

Minimum wage is one aspect that has always troubled the masses in times of financial crises or deficits. The world lies vulnerable to the same dilemma today. The workers are experiencing increasing expenses in life and increasing expectations at work, but the one aspect that is not increasing is the wage that they get for the work that they put in. In order to improve this situation, a local company sought to increase the minimum wage percentage of the workers form $5 an hour to $7.5. While this was done with the best intention to improve the financial stature of the employees, the downside was that they employees were not making any profits i.e. their work was bringing back $5 revenues and they were being paid $7.5 which was resulting in losses for the company. The negative impact of this was the downsizing of the company and many people losing their only source of income so the company would break even. The result was that those who lost their jobs were forced to look for work elsewhere and the jobs they were getting paid less than $5 an hour which was what they were getting before the policy change in the minimum wage, resulting in increasing financial pressures on those individuals and their families as well as increasing the unemployment rates and inflation in the community.

This is where the phenomenon of system thinking comes in extremely handy. System thinking mainly allows one to look at a problem-solution scenario from all perspectives as opposed to merely the need to rectify one situation. Dynamic complexity is an integral part of the system thinking, as it helps one to determine whether a change in the established system will have the same or similar impacts in the short and long run as well as in different circumstances and with different players (Senge, 1990). In the case of minimum wage, the overall impact that is most probable using the dynamic complexity structure is not a favorable one as it is highly likely that the overall employment opportunities will drop, inflation will rise, significant decrease in entry level posts, significant decrease in on-the-job training investments, no positive effect will be made on the poverty situation, amongst other things. The diagram below shows the overall impact that will be made if and when minimum wage percentages are increased:

Rise in Minimum Wage

Decrease in Entry level Posts

Rise in Inflation

Decrease in on-the-job training

Decrease in corporate profits

No impact on pover

t y

Increased financial strain

Increased financial strain, inflation and job stress

Another major aspect of system thinking is that it allows us to analyze situations using the phenomenon of circles of causality. The circles of causality in this situation will help us determine three particular aspects: one, events leading up to the situation; two, patterns of behavior critical to the problem-solution-problem structure; and, three, systemic structure. The problem though with the current situation is that, like most other social structures that currently exist, the focus of all solutions and applied infrastructures is on the events and very little focus is given on the latter two aspects. The first aspect deals with the basic communication structure of who said what to whom; while the latter two aspects deal with long-term learning -- the identification of behavioral patterns deals with not only identifying long-term trends and inclinations, it also focuses on the impact that they make and the possible adaptive solutions that need to be adopted; the systemic structure helps in identifying the changes that need to be made in the fundamental structures to cut off the problem from its root (Sterman, 2000).