The Use of Systems Thinking and Archetypes in Teaching Organisational Behaviour

This paper addresses the application of two systems thinking tools, "causal loop diagramming" and "archetypes" to the teaching of organisational behaviour (OB) concepts and case studies. These systems thinking tools can provide a teaching tool to assist students understand interdependencies, difficulties of implementation, impacts of assumptions and be critical of some of the traditional management theories. This paper takes organisational ethics as an example and applies causal loop diagrams and archetypes to explore the topic.