Plenary: SOC Student Plenary (Hybrid) on Monday, July 20, 2026, 10:15 AM
Room: Senaatszaal
Thread: Business and Strategy
Duration: 45 minutes
Chairs: Paula Goetz, Ellen O'Neill
Support: Özgün Çetinkaya
Embedding Systems Thinking Capability for Systems Change: A Behavioural Science Lens
Presenter: Miriam Spano
Keywords: Business and Strategy
This PhD research investigates the process of embedding systems thinking (ST) capability within public sector organisations (PSOs), focusing on how such capability can be developed and operationalised to support complex problem solving and systems change. Although ST is widely promoted in policy and practice, its application in PSOs remains limited. Existing research highlights persistent barriers, including conceptual ambiguity, fragmented interpretations, structural constraints, and limited opportunities for practical deployment. To address these challenges, this PhD proposes a conceptual integration of ST with organisational capability theory and provide a structured pathway for its development and use drawing on behavioural sciences. This framing aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice, which is particularly critical in risk-averse public sector contexts where continuity of service delivery constrains experimentation. Adopting an interdisciplinary, programmatic research design, the study draws on both academic and practitioner perspectives. A behavioural science lens is applied to examine how ST capability manifests across organisational levels and processes, with a focus on its enactment in practice. As a PhD by publication at mid-candidature stage, this presentation seeks feedback on method integration and the proposed approach to addressing conceptually complex phenomena.
Positive Tipping Point Dynamics and the Role of Entrepreneurial Activity
Presenters: Verneri Välimaa, Merla Kubli
Keywords: Environment and Resources
Positive tipping points literature is largely theoretical and lacks formal quantitative models of specific case studies. This limits the production of high-stakes policy insights which rely on broad policy and uncertainty analyses. Furthermore, the role of entrepreneurship is underexplored, despite the central role in stimulating increasing returns to adoption and network effects. We developed a socio-techno-economic model which incorporates adoption dynamics, social contagion, entrepreneurial dynamics and balancing feedback mechanisms which may lead to lock-in path dependence, inhibiting a positive tipping point, using solar PV in Germany as a case study. Entrepreneurial dynamics are central to the emergence of a positive tipping point; in the presence of an incumbent fossil-based regime, strong reinforcing feedbacks are necessary to stimulate, which appears to be unlikely without entrepreneurship and innovation. Entrepreneurs rely on policies to de-risk market entrance in the absence of a mature market, but once a market matures, policies could be lessened or removed. The work contributes to tipping points literature by formalizing the dynamics of entrepreneurship for low-carbon innovation, simulating and quantitatively analyzing the emergence of tipping. Avenues for further research include broader policy and uncertainty analyses, replication with other cases and refinement of PTP measuring methods.
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