BUS599 - Integrative Project, Mod 5 Case Assignment Essay

BUS599 - Integrative Project, Mod 5 Case Assignment - Essay Example One Balancing Loop Availability of new workers: This is an example of a balancing loop. In the food market, increasing new workers can be a limiting factor to the growth of the market. Explain each one of these loops - what are the causal factors and how do they affect each other. For the Reinforcing loop, you should look for an area where there is growth and for the Balancing loop, you need to look for goal behavior. Once you have identified and explained these critical feedback loops, you need to identify how Whole Foods Market has generated organizational learning, and how they can go further and generate additional organizational learning. What do they need to do to improve their performance further? Balancing Loop A balancing loop is a situation where a feedback reduces the effects of change in a system. It occurs when an action tries to bring two different things into an agreement or any other situation when one tries to provide a solution for a given problem, achieving a given goal etc. It can also be explained as what moves the systems in the direction of the equilibrium. A balancing loop is said to bring a negative feedback. Reinforcing Loop A reinforcing loop is a case where a feedback increases the effect of a change in a system. ... 20). Causal Factors and how they affect the Balancing and Reinforcing Loops Demand The reinforcing loop will either be determined by demand or by subsidy and all of these can affect the profitability of production of organic food. Whenever the farmers’ profitability is low, the other variables found in the reinforcing loop will automatically decrease and whenever the profitability is high, all the other will consequently increase. Subsidies are usually the biggest determinant in the market since market demand is still low and unreliable. Supply A big supply of raw materials reduces the market prices which will automatically decrease profitability for the whole food farmers, which will obviously discourage them. When there is a low supply, there will be high market prices and also the profitability will be high, a situation which will encourage the farmers to join the market. Market Price When there is a low supply of organic food, there will be a decrease in the demand for org anic food by retailers and this will result few purchases from the consumers. Also the raw material prices will act as a balancing factor by connecting to the price of organic food. The consumer price usually relies on the costs which are added in the whole food chain of distribution. Consumers The food consumers can only buy whole food when they find it to be appealing or attractive to them and this attractiveness of the whole food can be determined by several various factors like the price and the supply. Usually when the price is low and the supply is high coupled with diversity or variety of the organic food will definitely attract the consumers in large numbers. Equally when there is a high price and the supply is less the consumers will be discouraged from buying the organic