Integrating critical thinking and systems thinking: from premises to causal loops

This article demonstrates how to construct a policy argument from the perspective of critical thinking and how to convert this into a causal loop diagram utilising the tools of systems thinking and system dynamics. It is based on the authors' recent work on the Demonstrating Values project with the New Zealand Customs Service, which involved integrating critical thinking and systems thinking into the policy development process. Critical thinking is used in this context to reconstruct a rationale for a given policy. This helped us to isolate key concepts and desired outcomes. The concepts were then used to construct a conceptual diagram. Based on this, the key concepts were operationalised to form a causal loop diagram including the main variables of interest in the system. The causal loop diagram can then be used as the basis for further policy interventions and analysis. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.