a multiple perspective approach to problem...

A Multiple Perspective Approach to Problem Formulation: A Case Study of a Vietnamese Company Huy V. Vo* – David B. Paradice**– Marshall Scott Poole*** *Department of Information and Operations Management Texas A & M University College Station, TX 77840-4217 **Management Information Systems Department Florida State University Tallahassee, Florida 32306 ***Department of Speech Communication Department of Information and Operations Management Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-4234 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT: Researchers (Linstone, 1984; Checkland, 1981; Courtney, 2001) propose that systems-oriented, multiple perspective approaches are better suited to deal with “messy” (Vennix, 1996) or “wicked” problems (Rittel and Webber, 1973). In this paper, we apply a multiple perspective approach based on Mitroff and Linstone’s (1993) UST (Unbounded Systems Thinking) framework to a Vietnamese company case. As learned from the case, each perspective has a limited model of the problem situation that can be supplemented by other models (particularly those with opposed assumptions). We show that a model built on multiple perspectives offers a more complete picture on the problem and therefore help the organization better understand the problem situation creating a ground for better resolutions.

KEY WORDS: multiple perspectives, problem formulation, cognitive mapping.

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1. Introduction

Gorry and Scott Morton (1971) described three types of problems that decision support systems (DSS) can handle: structured, semi-structured, and unstructured. Today many researchers would agree that problems in organizations and society go beyond these types of problems. Researchers have characterized them as “messy” (Courtney, 2001; Vennix, 1996) or “wicked” (Rittel and Webber, 1973; Mason and Mitroff, 1981). In response, many researchers (Courtney, 2001; Checkland, 1999; Vennix, 1996; Mitroff and Linstone, 1993) propose that systems-oriented, multiple perspective approaches are suited to deal with these kinds of problems. These researchers have one characteristic in common, that is to tackle messy problems one needs to go beyond the traditional technical perspective (hard) to adopt softer approaches considering more human and organizational issues in problem formulation.

In this paper, we apply a multiple perspective approach based on Mitroff and Linstone’s (1993) UST (Unbounded Systems Thinking) framework to a Vietnamese company case. Their framework identifies technical, personal, and organizational perspectives of problems. Our approach emphasizes the need to balance multiple perspectives in problem formulation. We believe that the multiple perspective approach will help organizations avoid formulating the wrong problem precisely (Mitroff, 1998).

The paper is organized in the following way. First, we review the multiple perspective approach. Second, we discuss the gaps between perspectives. Finally, we present an application of the multiple perspective approach to formulate a problem situation in a Vietnamese company named HALONG.

2. The multiple perspective approach To deal with problems in today’s organizations, Mitroff and Linstone (1993)

propose the UST (Unbounded Systems Thinking) framework that identifies technical (T), personal (P), and organizational (O) perspectives of problems. Typically, the technical perspective, in the form of models, dominates problem formulations. The T perspective has been embedded in sciences so deep that when formulating a problem one naturally takes it for granted. Researchers (Axelrod, 1976; Senge and Sterman, 1994) have used the T perspective to surface P and O perspective assumptions, hence improving the communication between the P and O perspectives. As assumptions can be surfaced, they can be analyzed, tested, and improved. Research has shown that people can learn from their mental models when they are externalized (Morecroft and Sterman, 1994) using either causal mapping or system dynamics modeling.

Traditional problem formulation tends to ignore the P perspective because it is subjective, incomplete, and tends to be biased. Churchman believes that social or

A Multiple Perspective Approach to Problem Formulation 205

organizational problems happen because of the limitations of P perspectives (Mitroff and Linstone, 1993). Ignoring the P perspective can make problem formulation more objective and technically better but may lead to committing an error of the third kind: solving the wrong problem (Mitroff, 1998). In our view, ignoring the P perspective will lead to solutions that favor either the T or O perspective leading to a personal-organizational or personal-technical perspective gap.

The organizational perspective sees the world through the “window” of ‘affected and affecting organizations’ (Linstone, 1999). In this perspective, we deal with power and conflict, and as a result analytic tools seem useless (Linstone, 1999). According to Mitroff and Linstone (1993, p102) “the O perspective reflects the culture and the myths that have helped to mold and bind the organization, group, or society together as a distinct entity in the eyes of its members.” Building the O perspective is essentially “building a shared vision” in which people are bound together around a common identity and sense of destiny whereby they excel and learn (Senge, 1990).

In this research we consider the T perspective as important as other perspectives and we do not favor the T perspective over others. We also believe that the T perspective, used properly, can help people learn to overcome the biases in their mental models. We also use the T perspective to formulate human problems, but we would not privilege these technical models as the final truth of the situation; instead they are but partial truths. Other partial truths will come from other perspectives. In this research, we use cognitive mapping as the technical perspective to capture mental models of people and organizations.

3. The gaps between the perspectives

When the O and P perspectives are “swept into” the T perspective (Churchman, 1971; Mitroff and Linstone, 1993), the gaps between the perspectives are created. The gaps occur because different perspectives use different languages to talk about the same problem and thus it is difficult for one perspective to communicate with the other perspectives. For example, the technical perspective often fails to capture characteristics of the personal or organizational perspectives, leading to technical-personal (T-P) perspective gaps and technical-organizational (T-O) perspective gaps. The O-P perspective gap happens when the organization’s O perspective views a problem differently from its members’ P perspectives.

We believe that the gaps between organizational and personal perspectives are the causes of messy problems and to solve the problems one needs to close this gap via the technical-personal perspective gaps and the technical-organizational perspective gaps. We view the technical-personal and technical-organizational perspective gaps as the failure of the traditional technical perspectives in incorporating the personal and organizational perspectives into problem formulation. Thus to formulate a problem from the multiple perspectives approach, it is critical to minimize the gaps between perspectives. In the next section, we illustrate how the

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multiple-perspective approach can be applied to formulate a problem in an organization.

4. The case of HALONG

HALONG is a Vietnamese SME (small and medium enterprise) that has a system of nine sales reps dealing with customers (distributors or retailers). Each sales rep takes care of a predetermined area that may consist of one or more provinces in the central or the south of Vietnam. A sales rep is responsible for selling the company’s products to customers, collecting money from the customers and wiring the money to the company. Sales reps also have the responsibility to do advertising, sales promotions, and to keep good relationships with customers. Once or twice a month sales reps have to meet with the management at the company’s factory to discuss past operations and any issues that may arise in the near future.

4.1. Problem description and research questions According to the president of HALONG, the company grew steadily for the

period of 1990 to 1996 but the trend has been declined in recent years. Most employees knew the symptom but nobody agreed on what caused the problem or what the problem really was. To understand the problem, it is necessary to study some historical background of the problem.

In the management’s description, in the early period (1990-96), the company was successful due to many factors such as a potential market, a highly motivated sales force, and a flexible style of management. Over the period, the sales reps’ salary has doubled. However, their income need has increased even faster. The company attempted to satisfy this need by giving their sales reps some hints that could help them earn extra income in addition to their salary from the company. During this period, the company achieved its objectives; the sales reps were satisfied with their income and interesting jobs, and everybody in the company was happy and optimistic about the future growth.

A problematic period came after the first successful period. The sales reps were no longer motivated to sell the company products as in the past. The management felt that they could not count on the sales reps to do things as they could before. Sales growth and the company’s market share started decreasing. Unethical operations among sales reps became widespread. Some sales reps took advantage of the company’s working capital to do their own business, and in some cases to spend for their personal purposes. The management responded to these practices by tightening management control over the company’s working capital (mainly receivables) and establishing a new policy that would penalize salary if the sales reps fail to control their receivables within an allowed limit. After two years of implementing the new policy, the problem situation had not improved.


Given this background on the problem, a study using cognitive mapping was designed to investigate the problem from a multiple perspective approach. The research attempted to answer two questions: (1) to what extent, can cognitive mapping as a technical tool (T) help participants (P) at HALONG represent their understanding about the problem and (2) can an organizational perspective (O) built on different group perspectives (P) and the congregate concept (Bougon, 1992) help HALONG explain the causes of the problem situation from multiple perspectives?

4.2. Problem formulation from single perspectives We formed three groups that potentially have different perspectives on the

problem: the management group, the sales reps group and the production-accounting group. The management perspective (O0) was built with three senior members (the president - P- and two vice presidents - VP) of the management team using the workshop interactive mapping technique (Vennix, 1996). The sales reps perspective (G1) was built with 8 out of 9 total sales reps. The production-accounting group perspective (G2) was built with 8 representatives from accounting and production departments. Unlike the management team, members of G1 and G2 had their causal maps about the problem drawn on papers using the procedure described in Markoczy and Goldberg (1994) before they participated in group mapping. Group maps of G1 and G2 were built on individual maps using the aggregation algorithms as described in Lee et al. (1992) and Kwahk and Kim (1999).

Mot ivation sales

Salaryat tract iveness Salary

Local salary

Income n eeds/goal

-

-

Receivables

Boredom-

Market share

opportunity toincrease ext ra income

UnethicOpportunity to be

unethical

Selling skill/ability

-

Pressure to collectreceivables

Operating cost s

Customergeograph ic density

-

Subst ituteproducts

Compet it ion

- -

Company image

Managementcont rol

-

Informat ion systemscapability

T rust in sales reps

Delegatio n

-

Income per capit a

New to t he job-

Quality of salesreps

Replacement ofsales reps-

Figure 1: The management perspective on the problem.

The map of the management perspective on the problem (Figure 1) can be interpreted as follows. The problem with decreasing sales was caused by several factors: a) market conditions (such as competition and substitute products), b) the sales reps’ motivation to sales and their selling skill/ability. With regard to factors in group a), the company had no control over them and they were not as important as factors in group b). From the management’s evaluation, the current sales reps’ selling skill/ability was quite good. The main causal factor remained the sales reps’


problem from different angles (Table 1). People in a similar environment had similar mental models about the causes of the problem (the management group and the sales reps group) whereas people having different backgrounds have more diverged views (the production-accounting group). In this section, we have tried to formulate the problem from three different perspectives that we believed represent the appropriate perspectives of the stakeholders on the problem. Next, we discuss the O-P gap and an integrative model (built O) that is aimed to close the O-P gap.

Table 1: Comparing the management and other group perspectives on the

problem Management (O) Sales reps (G1) Others (G2) Problem perspective

� (P) Boredom that was caused by (1) income attractiveness, (2) market buying capacity, and (3) pressure � (All) Weak management control that increased opportunities to be unethical. � (VP2) Low quality of the sales reps

� Customers’ trust that was influenced by the company’s customer service and sales reps’ attitude. � The company’s receivable control policy that did not stimulate sales increase. � As the salary from the company was low, they had to rely on other sources of income.

� Ineffective management (sales force organization and marketing management) � Ineffective sales force � Lacking information for an effective marketing strategy (product quality, promotion, and price.)

4.3. The O-P gap

In this case, the O-P gap can be viewed as the disagreement between the initial O0 (management) perspective and the group G1 (sales reps) and G2 (the remaining group) perspectives on some critical issues. Analyzing the differences between the O0 and G1 as well as between the O0 and G2 on critical issues made us believe that the O-P perspective gap existed because the initial O0 perspective focused on a different group of critical factors. For example, the initial O map emphasized the sales reps motivation to sell while G1 (sales reps) pressed the company’s compensation and reward system that did not stimulate sales and G2 (production-accounting group) saw the problem as the interaction between the company’s weak management system and the sales reps’ ineffective operations.

Different groups might agree on the same factors causing the problem, but they often viewed them from different angles. For example, although the management (O0) and the sales reps (G1) agreed on salary as a factor causing the problem, they viewed them differently. Management did not want to increase salary and they thought sales reps’ desire for higher salary caused the problem. Also they did not believe in a long term relationship from salary to sales increase. On the other hand, the sales reps wanted higher salary and believed that salary increase would lead to increasing sales. Another disagreement was about the receivables control policy. The management wanted to retain their receivables control policy, as they thought

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the policy was created with a previously strong agreement from the sales reps, while the sales reps pointed out the ineffectiveness of the policy1.

4.4. Problem formulation from multiple perspectives To close the O-P gap, we need to build a model (T) that helps every stakeholder

(including the management) understand the problem from multiple perspectives that include the perspectives of the management, the sales rep group and the remaining group. Figure 4 is a synthesized model that is built by “sweeping in” other maps into the management map using the congregation concept (Bougon, 1992). The purpose is to create an integrative map that is able to explain the problem. Most marketing variables were left out because marketing is supposed not to be the real cause of the problem.

Income n eed

Salary

Salaryat t ract iv eness

-

Age

Motivat io

T ime to selling

Sales

Management t rust

Control-

Receivables hold t odo business

-

Other incomeact ivities

-

Extraincome

T otal incom

-

Rewards

Interesting job

Market potent ial

Compet it ion

-Subst ituteproducts

-

Happinesss

P roduct quality andsales service

-

-

Averageincome

R1''

B1

R1

B2 Boredom

-

P ressure

-R1'

R1'''

Receivables

-

P rofit-

Incomesat isfact ion

-

Figure 4: A model of how the problem happened.

Note: R stands for reinforcing loops while B stands for balancing loops (Forrester, 1961). R1: Salary attractiveness, motivation, time to selling, sales, salary, and salary attractiveness. R1’: Sales, management trust, control, pressure, boredom, motivation, time to selling, and sales. R2: Control, pressure, boredom, motivation, time to selling, sales, profit, management trust, and control. B1: Control, other income activities, time to selling, sales, profit, management trust, and control. B2: Salary, total income, income need, salary attractiveness, motivation, time to selling, sales, and salary B3: Salary attractiveness, other income activities/receivables holding, total income, income satisfaction, salary attractiveness.

The model can be interpreted as following. The success of the period of 1990-96 was created by the interactions of two reinforcing loops: R1 and R1’. These loops have a common characteristic that is the sales reps’ motivation and sales reinforce one another through other factors to generate the company’s sales growth. This is similar to the success story described by the management. Potential problems, however, already resided in the success of the company. The very factors that helped 1 It did not motivate sales reps to increase sales, because an increase in sales may harm the

sales reps’ salary via receivables.


the company become successful are the factors that would create problems for the company later. Income earned from outside sources and loose management control, which helped boost the company sales in the past, become failure factors hurting sales now. This problem only appears clearly when the sales growth came to a halt (due to market conditions) and sales reps felt a relative reduction in salary. They acted to maintain their total income by involving more outside income activities (via B3). A vicious circle or loop (Masuch, 1985) was created when the management decided to increase control over its sales force. While the control enforcement was intended to keep sales stable (via B1), it turned out that the vicious loop R2 dominates leading to reductions in sales.

5. Discussion

The problem in sales at HALONG did not come from a single source, but rather stemmed from an interaction of many complex problems (Ackoff, 1974). The first problem was “limit to growth” (Senge, 1990). In any system, growth is limited as resources are scarce (market and time of sales reps). This problem served as the trigger for other problems. This phenomenal problem is popular and in some cases unexpected in any growing system, but it does not seriously hurt the system. The second problem derived from biases in the participants’ (including the management) mental models. During the growth period people were pleased and inclined to be biased towards optimistic perspectives. They tended to be risk-taking and easy-going. This factor had a reinforcing effect on sales as it could increase motivation to sell. When growth stopped and margins went down to a critical threshold (Hall, 1976), participants went to another biased extreme – becoming frustrated and pessimistic. The third problem was that people expected too much (Jensen and Meckling, 1994) (or more than what the system can respond) in a stagnation stage. Participants tried to react in ways to recover the success status before, which leaded to creating a vicious loop. When the “limit to growth” happened, the sales reps felt some relative reductions in their salary and reacted to maintain their previous salary level (by putting more effort into outside activities). Then the management tried to maintain sales by asking their sales reps for even more efforts to increase sales and later imposing more control over the sales reps. The fourth problem was the nature of a vicious loop: once the loop is set, nothing can stop it (Masuch, 1985). Irrationally, participants tended to use the same mental model for the very reason that failed earlier. Unsatisfied with the sales results, the management reduced their level of trust and increased control over the sales reps, which further reduced the sales reps’ income and made sales worse. Researchers explained this phenomenon as people try to avoid cognitive dissonance (Staw and Ross, 1978). The last problem was the employment of linear thinking and a single perspective of the participants to guide their behaviors in complex systems. They simply ignored other perspectives and assumed that cause and effect were closely linked in time and space (Forrester, 1971). These problems interacted to create the problem at HALONG.

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6. Summary and conclusion

Viewing the management perspective as the initial O perspective and other groups’ perspectives as the P perspective, we found a large gap between the O and the P on the problem in the case of HALONG. To bridge this O-P gap, we used cognitive mapping as a technical language to build an integrative model by incorporating G1 and G2 group maps into the management map. The model could be used to explain how the problem happened hypothetically. We believe that the organizational model built on multiple perspectives will offer a complete picture and therefore offer better resolutions for the problem. Although this paper is limited to formulating the problem, we believe that a good problem formulation makes a ground for good solutions.

Consistent with the literature (Axelrod, 1976; Forrester, 1961; Senge, 1990), we found that mental models are often incomplete and prone to be biased as people can only see the problem from certain limited angles. We learned that people tend to blame problems on external forces or other people when they do not know the true causality of the problem. Also a biased or incomplete mental model frequently can be supplemented from other (in particular the opposite) mental models with the help of a sound technical tool – cognitive mapping. From the participants’ feedback at the end of the study, we are confident that cognitive (or causal) mapping is a candidate for a powerful but simple tool that can be used to communicate with human beings’ mental models.

Halong is a typical organization that is characteristic of counterintuitive behavior (Forrester, 1971) of a social complex system. In such an organization, people act purposefully in ways that frustrate their purposes (Masuch, 1985). This is a good signal of coming vicious loops. In most organizations, vicious loops are extant due to conflict of interests and biases in human mental models, but they are dormant. When the organization condition becomes unfavorable, vicious loops are triggered. Reactions from the participants based on biased mental models will help the vicious loops take off.

The O-P gap as well as vicious loops is undesirable. We found both the O-P gap and vicious loops in the case. We believe that they have a causal relation. It may be that the O-P gap causes vicious loops. In organizations, vicious circles are dangerous as they can destroy people and the organizations (Masuch, 1985). It is hard to detect them as people are inclined to think in a linear mode from a single perspective. The consequences of vicious loops may be perceived (as symptoms) but the cause (or the loop itself) is often hidden. In the case of HALONG, the management trying to solve the symptom problems did not really solve them rather changed their symptoms. The resolution of problems caused by vicious loops is a shared understanding of true causality of the problem to the participants. The multiple perspective approach, as shown in the case, can help participants see a more complete picture of the problem situation. It also helps both identify vicious loops and close the O-P gap. Failing to understand the situation as a whole, any participant may potentially participate in


creating vicious loops and contributing to their development when the system condition is enabled.

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MITROFF, I.I. Smart Thinking for Crazy Times the Art of Solving the Right Problems, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, 1998.

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MORECROFT, J.D.W. AND STERMAN, J. Modeling for Learning Organizations, Productivity Press, Portland, OR, 1994.

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SENGE, P.M. AND STERMAN, J.D. "Systems Thinking and Organizational Learning: Acting Locally and Thinking Globally in the Organization of the Future," In Modeling Learning Organization, J. D. W. Morecroft and J. D. Sterman (Ed.), 1994,

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