Systems thinking applied to crisis management: The eleven allegories as an analysis tool (Peter M. Senge)

This study applied the 11 barriers to systems thinking to two crisis events to determine if this approach offers a viable crisis prevention tool. Senge has identified 11 allegories that explain the laws of systems thinking. These allegories describe the challenges that prevent actualization of the principles of systems thinking within an organization.; As a case study, these 11 barriers were used to analyze the WorldCom economic crisis and the West Pharmaceutical physical crisis. Sources of data for both crises were the extensive media coverage of the events and archival records such as reports from court proceedings or investigative boards. The results indicated that both WorldCom and West Pharmaceutical exhibited each of the 11 barriers to systems thinking. WorldCom took a piecemeal approach to debt management instead of a systems thinking approach, which resulted in its economic crisis. West Pharmaceutical took a piecemeal approach to safety management instead of a systems thinking approach, which resulted in its physical crisis.; This study shows promise that applying systems thinking's 11 allegories to organizations is a viable approach to crisis management and, more specifically, crisis prevention. The significance of this study rests with advancing the crisis management discipline's understanding that using the 11 allegories as a tool for behavioral assessment within an organization may expose negative behaviors that can potentially escalate events into crises.