1. If you are the Chief of Police for Afghanistan, what solution would you develop to pay the cops that are actually working, reduce corruption, and boost their morale.

Solution: 

1. a) Focus on administrative control and internal self-monitoring:

• Pay commanders or supervising officers based on the accuracy of their payroll lists so they would be incentivized to keep track of ghost policemen, also set up a policy of disciplinary action for both higher-ups and regular policemen if they reach a certain portion of inaccurate payroll rosters so there are consequences for corruption.
• Use a biometric (fingerprint scan) check-in/check-out system. This would help the individual working schedules without having to involve extra personnel. At the end of the month (or paying cycle) policemen and their superiors would receive their paychecks according to the number of days worked (successfully registered by the biometric system). Should a worker exceed a certain amount of absent days, their paychecks would be frozen until they provided documentation for justifying their absences. 

• Reward workers with percentage pay raise to incentivize policemen who provide (a) daily reports of performed activities, (b) flagging people who do not follow the regulations, (c) flawless biometric record of attendance. 
• An external supervising team that does not belong to the department so they tend to be unbiased and won’t cover the corruption.

1. b) Create transparency measures:

• The mass media has the power to (a) expose corruption by releasing the names of the people who are caught faking as policemen and who are helping the ghost policemen to the public periodically with the internal department checks to improve the public trust and morale through a more transparent policy from the government, (b) discourage people from corrupt actions by propaganda and education about the punishment of violation (public judgment, court), (c) support the police stations for anti-corruption policy, (d) praise and highlight the policemen who are doing well and carrying out their duties appropriately, (e) increase citizen involvement on supervising police misconduct. 
• Once the population can see who the “good cops” are, not only they will start trusting more the policemen in charge, but they can also help hold the good cops accountable if they ever start straying off into corruption again.

1. c) Create a system to build literacy:

• Offer moral & civics education for the policemen as part of their training. For example, they could take classes in a school before being on duty.

• Perform (bi)monthly assessments of ethics and public administration law, so that their scores can serve as data to either promote or demote officers. No permanent benefits or positions.
• More emphasis on corruption control at the selection and training process, with integrity tests and polygraph tests

These changes reflect systems thinking principles of interdependence, multifinality, equifinality, regulation, and leverage points because we are trying to approach the problem from multiple avenues of the individual parts in the whole system by going through various levels of the hierarchy.

The proposed solution also introduces changes that would build an environment of self-regulation and peer-monitoring with consequences that would promote anti-corruption and cross-level accountability. That would make it more worthwhile for the commanders and non-supervisory employees to follow the proper procedures instead of being corrupt, we are taking advantage of leverage points at both the administrative level and the employee level by providing better benefits for “proper” behavior because taking a hard cut, the punitive approach may create more resistance from all levels than trying to offer an alternative where every stakeholder is satisfied with the benefits they gain from following the rules of the system.

 

2. If you are the entrepreneur, what multi-final solution will you develop so that you succeed, your venture succeeds (takes water hyacinth off the lake), and the people living along the lakeshore also walk away happy. Please be specific on how your solution might function and precisely whom you would work with. For example, refrain from including vague stakeholders like entire communities.

The root of the problem is the dissatisfaction the locals have towards her for taking this thing that “belongs” to everyone and making money out of it. While the communities on the shores of the lake have a problem with her making money on the hyacinth, they do not have a problem with the harvesting itself. Thus, our solution involves some type of profit splitting with locals, using the fishermen as leverage points, and not shifting the issue elsewhere or involving other parties.

 

She should solicit help from the fishermen, who benefit from her harvesting the hyacinth, to involve individuals who live in the communities on the shores in her business. She should hire locals (willing to do the job) to collect the hyacinth as well as pay them for the rights to harvest their hyacinth. 

 

She could also involve members of the communities who live on the shores to help expand her production of the compost and briquettes. She could teach them how to harvest safely and efficiently, and how to control the hyacinth’s growth to a proper amount. She could package her process and sell it to members of the local community for a discounted price.

 

Once she has the production running smoothly, she could look to expand her market for the compost and briquettes. 

 

• we are trying to change the system in order to reduce resistance from other stakeholders because they are also a part of the overall system.
• taking different approaches with the different groups of people as her partners recognizes that while they are separate individual parts, they all have an effect on the overall success of her venture so she should work with all of them for an equifinal and multi-final solution.
• this solution also recognizes the interdependence of the various stakeholders and how they are holistically involved from the water hyacinth being a type of checks and balances for the fishermen, for the owner of the venture, and the locals, it can aid in preventing overfishing and the compost and briquettes that it makes benefits the locals in return as an alternative to coal while being the source of profit for the venture.