A STRUCTURAL APPROACH TO ANALYSIS OF CAUSES OF SYSTEM WASTE IN THE INDIAN ECONOMY

Systems waste defined as 'any unnecessary inuput and/or any undesirabl e output from a system' is very important in management of sociotechni cal systems since it gives a better indication of the effectiveness an d efficiency of performance of such systems than productivity. For a c omplex system such as the Indian economy as a unit, it is difficult to pinpoint and analyse causes of system waste due to 'messiness' of the problem caused by many direct and indirect, hidden and articulated re lationships, among causes. To develop insights in order to manage the economy more effectively, it is imperative that the hierarchical struc ture of causation of system waste be revealed. Structural modelling is a methodology that employs graphics and words in carefully defined pa tterns to portray the structure of a complex issue. This paper describ es a study in which interpretative structural modelling (ISM) is used to develop an attribute enhancement structure of causes of system wast e in the Indian economy as a whole, for which the causes set was devel oped by a large scale Delphi study. The structure developed is subject ed to MICMAC analysis to reveal indirect relationships among the cause s so that the process of management can be aided.