Student Research Symposium Program Portal: Submission #176

Abstract Donella Meadows was a systems scientist and environmental thinker whose work reshaped how complex systems are understood. Meadows addressed a problem in decision-making: the tendency to treat complex systems as predictable and easily controlled. Her work demonstrated that failure across systems arises not from a lack of effort or expertise, but from misunderstanding system structure, feedback, and delay. Rather than focusing on isolated events or short-term outcomes, Meadows emphasized the importance of system dynamics: how interactions among components generate emergent behavior over time. This perspective positioned systems thinking not only as an analytical framework, but as a form of leadership capable of guiding action in conditions of uncertainty and long-term consequence.

Representations of feedback dynamics and leverage points illustrate how leaders can shift system behavior by intervening at structural levels instead of reacting to surface-level outcomes. The analysis highlights both the strengths of Meadows’ framework, such as its broad applicability, as well as its limitations, including challenges in resistance to paradigm change. This work demonstrates that Meadows’ systems-based approach offers enduring insights for leadership in any context characterized by complexity and uncertainty.