Abstract for: Diversity related work in the international system dynamics conference (2022-2025): trends and contributions

Attention for diversity between people has been implicit in system dynamics scholarship from the emergence of the field and recently got an impulse with the topic of the 2022 ISDS conference being “Diversity". What did this growing attention for diversity bring to the field of system dynamics? How did the (small) proportion of diversity related work develop over time? What type of system dynamics work is done on diversity and what kind of insights does it provide us with? This paper analyses the trend, spread, type and contribution of diversity work. We used the repository of conference submissions and data set of submissions, using keywords and assessing them. We showed that diversity related submissions peaked at 36 submissions in 2022, with the conference theme being ‘Diversity’, and oscillated around 20 submissions in the conferences since. Roughly half of the diversity related submissions are submitted to other threads than diversity, the work appears in a broad range of threads with a peak in the health/health policy category. The type of submissions is more or less equally divided over formal modelling, causal loop diagramming and other work. The analysis indicates that all types of system dynamics are relevant to the field of diversity research. The broad range of contributions of diversity related papers, ranging form the evaluation of meeting business targets to the explanation of unequal access to healthy food and unequal health outcomes shows that diversity related submissions are relevant to the broad field of system dynamics as well.