Overcoming managers’ myopic decisions in a waste collection company

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show how the changing interrelationships between fleet management, human resources and outsourcer capacity areas are likely to counterbalance managerial policies, thereby generating a performance decay. The use of system dynamics modelling in a waste collection company offered an effective contribution to support decision makers to overcoming myopic decisions. Design/methodology/approach Literature review and a case study analysis (including interviews with company actors and data gathering) offered the basis to build a system dynamics model. The model built was then used to run simulations sessions to assess alternative investments decisions. Findings Simulation results show that understanding cause-and-effect relationships between company sub-systems can help managers to shift the focus of their decision process from a single department to the whole business system. Further, the paper offers three alternative scenarios (myopic, reactive and proactive) from which to learn how to design effective long-term sustainable policies. Research limitations/implications The simulation model was developed based on a literature review and a single-case study. Although it offers a useful contribution in the investigated case, to generalise its results, additional application to waste collection companies would be desirable. Practical implications The findings of the study have implications for public decision makers and those scholars investigating how to discourage the adoption of myopic decisions in complex environments. Originality/value To the best of our knowledge, only few studies investigated how the fleet management is likely to impact on the performance of waste collection companies. This study offers a contribution in this direction.

Optimization tools applied to physical asset maintenance management: state of the art

“…Simulation using system dynamics has also been used to investigate problems involving multifaceted elements that interact and evolve over time, as found in Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) [34], or by showing how changing interrelationships between fleet management, human resources and subcontractor capability areas are likely to counteract management policies, thus generating performance deterioration [35].…”

Editorial

“…Bivona et al (2019) showed how the changing interrelationships between fleet management, human resources and outsourcer capacity areas are likely to counterbalance managerial policies, thereby generating a performance decay. The authors learned these lessons through a case study with a waste collection company where they made an effective contribution to support decision makers to overcoming their myopic decisions.…”

Training in Systems Thinking and System Dynamics as an Effective Way to Tackle Complexity in the Management of Organisations

“…This is in contrast with the approach that offers solutions to customers by optimising the operations of the individual parts of an organisation without considering the way in which they interact (Martinez Garcia and Martínez Caro, 2009;Hsieh and Yuan, 2010). But there is more than that: System Dynamics could enable managers to develop more accurate cognitive representations about their business models (Moellers et al, 2019); or it could help managers to overcome decisional myopia, shifting the focus of their decision process from a single department to the whole business system (Bivona et al, 2019). Moreover, System Dynamics could be an important support tool for project management planning and monitoring activities (Li et al, 2009;Yujing et al, 2015).…”