CED 4

Using System Dynamics ILEs to enhance Intellectual Capital policies in service businesses

Autori: Carmine Bianchi, Enzo Bivona

Knowledge is a primary strategic asset impacting on business growth. It significantly affects the accumulation of other strategic resources. It is in turn influenced by learning processes generated by the fulfilment of management routines aimed to exploit and coordinate different assets.
Assessing knowledge is critical to support policy makers in balancing trade-offs related to different alternatives in business growth management.
Several approaches have been suggested by the business literature and practice to assess knowledge; also the System dynamics method has been applied to this issue.
This paper tries to contribute to the research debate in this domain by focusing the concept of Intellectual Capital (IC) and exploring cause-and-effect relationships underlying its dynamics and business growth.
Such relationships are embodied in an Interactive Learning Environment (ILE) that has been tailored to the context of service firms, where knowledge plays a crucial role for the firm success and continuity. In particular, the generic structure of the ILE has been applied to a telecom mobile service provider and to an insurance company. The first context has offered the basis for the application of the ILE into an educational setting, while the second one provided the arena where a business application was developed.
Main key-issues underlying model development and the ILE application are discussed in the paper, and some significant outcomes from simulations are commented.

Paper presentato: 23rd International System Dynamics Conference in Boston, Massachusetts – July 17

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