To help address plurality of perspectives from multiple stakeholders, a number of planning tools have been proposed. Qualitative system dynamics is finding a home in management development programmes, where it is bring- ing clarity and rigour to a particularly abstract field. At the same time, system dynamics is being used to provide senior and middle managers with models for strategy and operational policy development at many different levels of an organisation. A number of large companies have over twenty different system dynamics modelling projects in existence at one time (Wohlstenhome, 1999).
In this paper, we use participatory system dynamics (SD) modelling to address these evidential and procedural challenges. Participatory SD modelling involves a range of stakeholders in a collaborative learning process to develop a shared theory about the causes of trends over time in a complex system, and the policies that are likely to have a desired influence on observed trends (Beall and Ford, 2010; van den Belt, 2004; Vennix, 1999).