This paper addresses wicked problems not just as large and complex (Hill & Huppe, 2014) or “resistant to resolution” (Commonwealth of Australia, 2007) but as essentially an extreme case of non-structured problems (Dunn,... [ view full abstract ]
This paper addresses wicked problems not just as large and complex (Hill & Huppe, 2014) or “resistant to resolution” (Commonwealth of Australia, 2007) but as essentially an extreme case of non-structured problems (Dunn, 1988; Simon, 1973; Thompson and Thuden, 1959) where lack of consensus on goals and means is more pervasive than in other cases.
There's a large literature on wicked problems (Xiang, 2013), yet much of it does not highlight the cognitive element that is essential to them, while another part, important within the governance literature, looks at them in the context of long term developments in which time allows to try at structuring them, e.g via designed networks (Hoppe, 2010) or collaborative rationality (Innes & Booher, 2016). What happens when wickedness is manifest for problems that are being approached by projects, which have by definition shorter lifespans than policies do? That is a remarkably less addressed subject, and the one addressed by this research. Wickedness has been associated to project failure (Head & Chiang, 2016) and project “black swans” (Flyvbjerg and Budzier, 2011) but in-depth case studies are hard to find.
The cases studied in this research are the six sub-projects of a large effort known as Project Netherlands –because it was financed by the Dutch government- envisioned as the starting effort for the implementation of Colombia´s new Integrated Water Management Policy (2010). Implementation pace was measured for each one of them and, afterwards, they were compared for five variables: trust, perceived interdependence, leadership, number of actors and problem structuredness, the last one understood not as a characteristic of the problem (Simon, 1973; Thompson and Thuden, 1959), but as a situation of the actors addressing it (Hoppe, 2010). The focus was on variation (Winter, 2012) since even the “best” of these subprojects was remarkably delayed –delays ranged between 39 per cent and 105 per cent, and then the worst case was the cancellation of the policy´s flagship subproject.
After triangulating results from 26 interviews to key actors in the subprojects and the closed coding of 175 subproject documents, problem structuredness emerged as a relevant variable to explain implementation pace, more than trust, leadership and even perceived interdependence –although interdependence was found to be key to prevent project collapse and keep organizations working together. The results are better understood, however, when looking at configurations between this variables or “conditions” (Ragin, 2008). The less relevant variable turned out to be number of actors.
Collaboration demands trust, interdependence and leadership (Faerman et al., 2001; Ansell & Gash, 2008). But in these cases it also required not-so high levels of wickedness to prevent project failure. The other way around, collaborations around wicked problems may need some interdependence, trust and/or leadership between organization to work. Decision rules mattered (Thompson and Thuden, 1959; Nutt, 2002) and flexible arrangements for wicked problems, aimed at making them workable with scarce time, led to collapse when combined with low trust and low interdependence. Lastly, organizational perspectives are more relevant than disciplines to explain wickedness in these cases.
