MICE TOURISM NETWORK TOPOLOGY AS AN INNOVATION IN THE COMPLEMENTARITY OF AN SSM APPLICATION

Abstract

Socio-Technical systems are characterized by complexity, turbulence, and the diversity of points of view on how to deal with problem situations. However, they can be explored by the observer as learning systems.

This research establishes the problem situations that have avoided the viability of MICE Tourism in Mexico, such as legacy aspects, the missing relationships with the academia, and the lack of benefits for society. This was done by using the first three stages of Soft System Methodology (qualitative approach) and the Network Science tools (network analysis). The argument to use these tools is that they were developed to study, characterize and modelling the dynamic of complex systems. The approaches complement each other to enrich the diagnosis of the system.

The conception of the MICE tourism network is based on the relationships (links) between the elements (nodes) that interact in the system. This MICE tourism network is composed by 43 nodes and, at least, every node has six links with its neighbors, yielding 406 links. It means that the communication throughout the network is spreading, so that if more nodes are added to this network, the number of links will grow faster.