Co-Authored by: Johnson, M., Shipley, M., Dimitrova-Davidova, P., and Yankov, N.

The transition from centralized economic planning to more open economic systems has occurred in a number of countries, especially in Eastern Europe. A major issue is design of the flow of information needed for effective management, both for ongoing management information system use as well as for decision support. Soft system modeling principles were used by a team of Bulgarian and U.S. researchers to study this information flow. This paper describes the process used to understand some of the issues involved for a Bulgarian winery. This discussion led to development of an initial system dynamics model of essential information. The model shows the basic flow of information within the firm, and can serve as a decision support system for a number of key managerial decisions such as pricing, promotion, production capacity, and labor policies.