Modeling the general and task environments of agricultural sector: Assessing the impacts of Turkey's accession to EU using system dynamic modeling

Turkey is preparing for EU accession which will have political, social, economical, technological impacts to every organization in Turkey through the changes in the environmental variables. For any candidate country that pursues being a member of EU, the expected transformation is tremendous.In strategic management, environmental scanning is important for organizations to determine opportunities and threats during strategy formulation. A top-level manager should anticipate the changes in the environmental variables and since each and every company in Turkey will be influenced as a result of Turkey?s EU accession it is crucial to anticipate the effects of accession.In this study we applied literature-based modeling and extracted causality from scientific journals about Agricultural, Political, Social and Economical (APSE) areas. Then based on this study we used System Dynamic (SD) modeling which has a Systems Thinking approach, and developed three SD models: EU Accession, Agricultural Dynamics and initial Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of EU, and run computer simulations.Simulation results of Accession Model indicate that Turkey completes accession negotiations in 2016 and eventually be an EU member in 2018. When the model is applied to Poland and Spain, it is seen that they became an EU member four and three years earlier than the model suggested. Domestic factors are found to be the most important factor that determines accession date.Simulation results of Agricultural Model indicate that agricultural dynamics justify the three initial policies of CAP. And simulation results of the CAP Model showed that the effects of EU policies on EU are more important in the long-run than the short-term effects of enlargement on the agricultural sector.Since this is the first and only study which analyzes EU accession from a systems thinking approach, we firmly believe that the models constructed in this study will inspire other researchers to continue with this subtle endeavor and hope that the models we proposed in this research are examined and extended by vigorous researchers who adopt systems thinking approach and use System Dynamics methodology in analyzing complex problems in social sciences.