A Corporate System Model of a Sports Club: Using Simulation as an Aid to Policy Making in a Crisis

The sports club, described in this study, was losing members and in dire financial straits. It became obvious from the optimistic forecasts and fragmented historical records that the membership system was poorly understood by the club's decision making groups and committees. A corporate system model of the club was developed from interviews with the club executive and influential club members. In this way an understanding was gained of the fundamental system of relations determining the viability of the club. Various suggestions for remedial action were tried out on a simulation version of the model and the results communicated to the board of directors. The study serves to illustrate the use of computer simulation modeling, not as an optimising or forecasting tool, but as an aid to policy making in a crisis. It became part of the organizational behavior process for coping with an extreme situation that, in this case, had a happy ending. The study attempts to relate the scientific process of synthesizing a formal model with the psychological and socio-political processes of decision making in a complex system during a crisis.