MGT603: Systems Thinking - Critique of ADM's Decision-Making Process

This document presents a critique of an original post concerning Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM)'s decision-making processes, employing a systems thinking perspective. The critique highlights the holistic nature of the original post, which identifies issues such as loss of client reliability and inefficient contract analysis within ADM's Polish office. It points out the absence of a rich picture, a crucial tool in Soft Systems Thinking for visualizing and understanding complex situations. The critique suggests that the malfunctioning decision-making process is causing the Polish office to lose market share and emphasizes the importance of a comprehensive analysis for effective problem-solving. Desklib offers a platform for students to access similar solved assignments and study resources.

Running head: SYSTEMS THINKING 2
SYSTEMS THINKING 2
Name of the Student
Name of the Organization
Author Note

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Part B
Critique
The original post is considered to be holistic as the issue of the company brings more
insight as well as solutions which are necessary for making the solution easier (Morandi et
al.,2014). The approach of Soft System Thinking has been utilised in several countries as well as
disciplines because of its focus is on the solution’s learning part. The actual problem is identified
to a great extent. The problem in ADM has been seemed to be complex on several levels. First
one is the loss of reliability with the clients due to the lack of authority for signing contract and
the second one is the loss of enough time taken for the total analysis of the potential contract.
Therefore, it is noticed that the office in Poland is losing the market as a whole because of the
malfunctioning of the total process of decision making. The post says that a rich picture has been
utilised for depicting the current process of decision making but there is no such rich picture
present in the post. It is totally missing in the original post. A rich picture is basically a path of
exploring, acknowledging and defining a situation as well as expressing it with the help of
diagrams for creating a preliminary mental mode (Alter, 2013).

2SYSTEMS THINKING 2
References
Alter, S. (2013). Work system theory: overview of core concepts, extensions, and challenges for
the future. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 72.
Morandi, M. I. W. M., Rodrigues, L. H., Lacerda, D. P., & Pergher, I. (2014). Foreseeing iron
ore prices using system thinking and scenario planning. Systemic Practice and Action
Research, 27(3), 287-306.