Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water ...

Causal Loop Diagram 5
A process for representing the cause and effect relationships among variables.
Supports: problem solving, knowledge sharing, learning
LEVEL OF EFFORT
SIZE OF UTILITY
SCOPE OF WORK
MED
SCALABLE
NARROW
Causal loop diagrams are used as a tool to aid in Systems Thinking. They are used to
represent the structure of a system by showing the relationships between its key parts. This
helps in understanding the underlying drive behavior and provides a visual representation with
which to communicate that understanding. The diagram generally consists of one or more
closed loops that represent cause and effect relationships between variables. This document is
designed to give you a high level overview of how to construct a causal loop. In a causal loop
diagram, a link is an arrow between two variables that represents a relationship. There are two
types of links, ―same‖ and ―opposite‖. ―Same‖ links are indicated by an ―s‖ and represent that a
change in the first variable results in a change in the same direction in the second variable.
―Opposite‖ links are indicated by an ―o‖ and represent that a change in the first variable results
in a change in the opposite direction in the second variable.
Guidelines for Drawing Causal Loop Diagrams
GUIDELINE
Selecting Variable Names
1. When choosing a variable
name, use nouns. Avoid
verbs and action phrases
since the action is
conveyed in the arrows.
For example, ―Costs‖ is
better than ―Increasing
Costs,‖ since a decrease in
Increasing Costs is
confusing. The sign of the
arrow (―s‖ for same or ―o‖
for opposite) indicates
whether Costs increase or
decrease relative to the
other variable. (Note that
often a ―+‖ is used for ―s‖
and a ―-―is used for ―o‖.
This is another way of
expressing the same
concept.
EXAMPLE
5 Adapted from the Department of the Navy Knowledge Centric Organization Toolkit
C-25
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