Abstract for: Bounded Rationality in System Dynamics: Expanding the Perspective

There are narrow connections between System Dynamics and what Simon called “bounded rationality”. This paper wants to take a step further. System Dynamics not only goes beyond classical notions of rationality toward a bounded rationality emphasizing cognitive limits and environmental constrictions. System Dynamics is also in tuning with many other alternatives to classical rationality. We will analyze them briefly. In particular, we will consider 1) the sort of communicative rationality displayed in the processes of construction and use of System Dynamics models, 2) the sort of expressive rationality displayed when the implicit knowledge about a system, encapsulated in mental models, is made explicit through the production of a simulated behavior, and 3) the sort of evaluative rationality displayed when new possibilities of decision and action are showed and experimented through those simulation models. To take into account the expansions of bounded rationality proposed would benefit both to practitioners and to theoreticians of System Dynamics.