Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM)
Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) is an effective methodology used to cope with the novel, ill-defined problems in complex, real-world settings. It is a transdisciplinary tool used to understand complex situations that occur in diverse knowledge domains such as: when developing plans, managing organizations, designing large-scale systems, and used in many other kinds of human endeavor. ISM is a well-established systematic and comprehensive method for dealing with complex issues. It was proposed by Warfield in 1973. ISM identifies relationships among specific factors, which are relevant to the problem or issue. This helps researchers to structure a set of different and directly related factors (parameters) affecting the system into a comprehensive hierarchical model so that unclear and poorly expressed conceptual system models will be well-defined.
