Coordinating and implementing solutions for wicked policy problems poses different challenges: coordinating the multi-actor institutional landscape, managing conflicting values and interests, and ensuring programmatic operational success (Head & Alford, 2013; Marsh & Mcconnell, 2010). Wicked policy problems, and the coordination efforts they require could affect public sector organizations, but these seem to be only one kind of external pressure for them. Organizations may pick up some pressures, prioritize and subsequently adapt their formal and informal operations. We call this process: organizational adaptation. It refers to: “a process, not an event, whereby changes are instituted in organizations. Adaptation does not necessarily imply reactivity on the part of an organization (i.e., adaptation is not just waiting for the environment to change and then reacting to it) because proactive or anticipatory adaptation is possible as well (Cameron, 1984, p. 123)”. At the same time there are other influencing factors which can both hinder and affect the organizational adaptation, like capacity, other priorities etc (6, Leat, Seltzer, & Stoker, 1999).
This paper studies the perceptions of managers who are confronted with three different wicked policy problems. The central research question is: how do managers perceive the adaptation of their organization to wicked policy problems?
Focus lies on gaining insights about the organizational adaptation process, across policy issues and institutional contexts. Q methodology is used to study the managers’ points of view. Respondents were asked to rank statements in relation to other statements, based on preference. Factor analyses are used to identify clusters of respondents who have sorted the statements in a similar way (Brewer, Selden, & Facer II, 2000; Van Exel & De Graaf, 2005). The inductive approach of this research method allows us to retrieve and learn about new discourses and how we could understand them, based on organizational variables.
Biliography
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Cameron, K. S. (1984). Organizational Adaptation and Higher Education. The Journal of Higher Education, 55(2), 122–144.
Head, B. W., & Alford, J. (2013). Wicked Problems: Implications for Public Policy and Management. Administration & Society, 1–29. http://doi.org/10.1177/0095399713481601
Marsh, D., & Mcconnell, A. (2010). Towards a framework for establishing policy success. Public Administration, 88(2), 564–583. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2009.01803.x
Van Exel, J., & De Graaf, G. (2005). Q methodology : A sneak preview. Social Sciences, 2, 1 – 30.
