Identifying hidden critical elements in interconnected systems: An influence dynamics analysis approach considering structural constraints

Caibo Zhou, Wenyan Song, Huiwen Wang and Lihong Wang

European Journal of Operational Research, 2025, vol. 327, issue 2, 592-605

Abstract: The systems analysis field has traditionally focused on identifying the essential elements within an interconnected system and analyzing the cause-and-effect relationships among them. However, most decision-making methods in system analysis have been one-sided. They primarily rely on the interactions between elements to make decisions, neglecting to account for the non-uniform influence attenuation among elements and unequal importance diffusion. Furthermore, these two factors are closely tied to the topological structure of systems, which has been an often-overlooked aspect in previous research, leading to inaccurate identification and omission of hidden key elements. In response to these challenges, this paper introduces a novel method called SIDA (Structural-constrained Influence Dynamic Analysis). We utilize structural constraint coefficients derived from structural hole theory to describe the non-uniform attenuation. Furthermore, we integrate an influence and distance-weighted PageRank algorithm to manage the unequal importance diffusion taking into account both the influence and the distance between elements within systems. We validated our proposed method through a comprehensive analysis of a pharmaceutical industry ecosystem, comparing its performance with previous approaches to validate its effectiveness and practicality. The case study results demonstrate that SIDA produces more reasonable element analysis and ranking outcomes.

Keywords: (Y) Problem structuring; Key elements identification; Structural constraints; Non-uniform influence attenuation; Unequal importance diffusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:327:y:2025:i:2:p:592-605

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2025.05.038

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