Abstract for: Archetype-Based Organizational Change: A Teaching Experiment with Undergraduate Business Students

Students often produce recommendations that are well-intentioned but superficial, focusing on symptoms rather than the structures that generate recurring problems. To address this, this paper describes a classroom experiment that used System Dynamics structures as scaffolds to help undergraduate business students analyze a real organizational challenge with greater structural depth. The experiment was implemented in the first semester of 2026 with 28 fourth-semester undergraduate students in a Spanish-language Organizational Change course. Over three two-hour sessions, six teams analyzed a real challenge from a zeolite-based company under NDA. To guide this work, students received a Genially with selected System Dynamics structures and a Forrester-inspired outline guiding problem definition, structure selection, causal modeling, scenario exploration, resistance analysis, and implementation design. Final reports served as the main evidence for reflection. Five of the six teams selected Limits to Growth, while one selected People Express. While output quality varied—with one team clearly stronger, several partial but useful analyses, and at least one weak result—the framework consistently pushed students to think more deeply about stakeholder interactions, constraints, and the absence of silver-bullet solutions. The main weakness was difficulty moving from structural diagnosis to policy design and testing. The experiment suggests that System Dynamics structures can lower the adoption barrier for students with no formal SD training and function as a bridge between organizational change education and later simulation work. Nonetheless, the method requires strong scaffolding, more time for comparing structures, and more explicit teaching on policy design. For the System Dynamics community, the paper offers a practical way to repurpose existing structures as reusable teaching and dissemination assets. Proofreading, grammar and style corrections.