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The main purpose of this article is to improve the wicked problem framework by incorporating the problem of political order, as it appears in the context of Brexit. The first part specifies what is meant by political order and highlights two core meanings: settled order, and orderliness as the presence or absence of rules. Thereafter, the article specifies what is meant by wicked problem and shows that this body of literature has not really engaged with the problem of political order. In the third section, the focus is on how and in what sense Brexit constitutes a wicked problem with reference to a set of criteria for delineating wicked problems. As part of that, it is made clear where and how matters of political order appear. In the conclusion, I discuss how we can improve the wicked problem framework by including questions of political order.

AbstractThe alleviation of wicked problems requires collective action because these issues are characterized by significant uncertainty and complexity. This research extends prior work by examining how conveners' use robust action to navigate wicked problems' defining characteristics in the mobilization process. It provides a longitudinal study of a health care nonprofit attempting to engage other stakeholders in addressing the high costs and inadequate quality of health care in a region of the United States. Specifically, the convener sought to address this wicked problem by developing a health information exchange. The findings relate five robust action tactics through which the convener advanced collective action.

Does engineering design education in North America prepare students to address the major issues of our time? In today's political and social climate, engineers are part of multi-disciplinary teams tasked with finding solutions to complex issues like poverty, climate change, the housing affordability crisis, resource depletion, and water shortages. By definition, these problems are "wicked". If engineers are to play a role in addressing issues that exist at the intersection of technology and society, they must have a deep understanding of both technical competencies and of human factors. They must have the ability to empathize. In consideration of today's social, political, and environmental challenges, it has never been more important to instill social competencies into engineering education and practice, particularly around engineering design. This paper analyzes the previous literature on empathy in engineering education in North America and synthesizes the data to present the conceptualization that engineers have of empathy in education and practice.

Information-sharing projects in public administration need to pay attention to the organizational stability of the network or communities and the satisfaction of civil users. Therefore, the sustainability of processes and outcomes in resolving the multi-agency problem is necessary. This research aims to explore information sharing in the context of a multi-agency network assigned to eradicate opium cultivation and consumption in Thailand. The research found that three dimensions of management are crucial to the performance of a multi-agency network: firstly, the setting of clear goals; secondly, the balancing of benefits and adequate resources; and thirdly, constructive coordination. In addition, this network applies both online and offline channels in the information-sharing process. At the same time, these two channels have their respective strengths and weaknesses. This network can enhance efficiency and cope with any limitations by integrating both channels. This paper argues that the information-sharing strategy that supports a multi-agency network operation should be integrated between online and offline channels. Moreover, the integration of information-sharing methods is key to the success of a digital government taskforce in providing an efficient network for a long-term problem-solving structure.

This Article posits, first, that resilience theory offers important insights into our understanding of wicked problems and, second, that to understand the value of resilience theory to wicked problems, we should start by going back to the context of Rittel's and Webber's 1973 delineation of the ten characteristics of a "wicked problem." Rittel and Webber were in fact among the vanguard of researchers beginning to articulate the realization that social and ecological systems—now social-ecological systems ("SESs")—do not follow the predictable and mechanistic rules of Newtonian physics. As a result, SESs do not yield, at least not over the long term, to engineering-based "solutions" designed to satisfy contemporary priorities and desires. Instead, like resilience theorists, although lacking resilience theory's vocabulary, Rittel and Webber acknowledged that change is the norm for both social and ecological systems and that the realities of complex adaptive social-ecological systems make "once and done" planning and management impossible. In rereading Rittel and Webber almost fifty years later, however, it becomes useful to pull apart the blending of social capriciousness and ecological panarchy that together, for them, added up to "wickedness" in social problem solving. Social capriciousness—the fact that social priorities and desires can both evolve over time and flip in response to political events such as elections—has become the far more accepted component of "wickedness"; few anymore expect social "solutions" to persist indefinitely. However, that same acceptance of continual, often unpredictable, change has not yet translated to the ecological side of wicked problems—which is precisely why resilience theory can help twenty-first-century citizens to formulate more productive approaches to those problems.

The key question addressed in this paper is that of connecting the institutional setting and planned outcomes of the integration policy with the instruments and types of coordination in the government system. Integration policy may be defined as a "wicked problem", as it is a cross-sectoral issue that concerns the responsibilities of various actors. Integration is not a policy that can develop serendipitously; it needs to be designed and proper instruments of coordination should be developed. It requires coordination across different sectors and tiers of government, with both formal and informal coordination structures and instruments that can be used to facilitate coordinated implementation of policy goals and measures. Croatia has only rather recently started to develop its integration policy. Due to a relatively small number of migrants, the integration policy is primarily targeted at the refugee population. In practice, integration is an inter-departmental task dealt with by different organisations (ministries, agencies) at different governmental levels (national, local) and includes their cooperation with different non-state actors. This is very challenging in the highly fragmented and pluralistic Croatian public administration system, which lacks integrative government capacity, strategic planning, and prioritisation of developed consultative mechanisms. The paper analyses the recently promoted Croatian integration policy in the light of coordination models and instruments. It provides an overview of the types and instruments of coordination in the government system and presents the development of the Croatian migration and integration policy, its institutional setting, and the implementation of integration in practice. Finally, it provides a classification and evaluation of the coordination instruments in the integration policy.

In a time of increasing globalisation and urbanisation, shrinking peripheral rural areas have become a truly wicked planning problem in many European countries. Although a problem can be easily perceived and measured by various indicators, the precise definition of the problem is problematic. Based on the case of a Danish planning process which was carried out in collaboration with a charitable trust, this paper discusses an emerging strategic planning approach at the municipal level. We use the concept of wicked problems, strategic planning theory and Actor-Network-Theory to study a collaborative, place-based and project-oriented process directed at concrete physical outcomes. We frame strategic planning as a translation process where the interaction between human and non-human actors translates a unique, complex and contested situation into an innovated situation. We find that local physical projects played a major role in this process. First, they acted as a vehicle that assembled planners, politicians and stakeholders to work towards strategic visions across multiple scales. Second and consequently, they stimulated considerable second and third order effects in the form of shared problem-understandings, increased social capital, and follow-up projects initiated beyond the actual planning process. We conclude that local physical projects, when conceived in a collaborative and strategic manner, can contribute to sustainable adaptation to rural shrinkage.

The implementation of the UN&rsquo ; s Sustainable Development Goals in the urban centres of the world is one of the most consequential and ambitious projects that the nations of the world have undertaken. Guidance for achieving the goals in an integrated way that creates true sustainability is currently lacking because of the wicked nature of the problem. However, its wickedness highlights the critical importance of governance and decision-making processes for such integration, including the relationship between governments and their citizens. In particular, there is strong evidence to suggest that managing wicked problems like the SDGs is best done through forms of democracy that are deliberative, representative and influential. Called &ldquo ; deliberative democracy&rdquo ; we draw on an existing body of research and case studies of deliberative democracy in action to apply its principles to a step-by-step process for the implementation and integration of the Goals in Cities. The paper concludes with the beginnings of a framework based on deliberative democratic principles, and an outline of methods for the scaling and expansion of the implementation process to cope with the global nature of the problem.

Wicked-Schisto: The wicked public health problem of Schistosomiasis and the interdisciplinary research helping to control it
Over 240 million people have schistosomiasis, a neglected tropical disease (NTD), caused by parasitic worms called Schistosoma. Over 90% of infected people live in sub-Saharan Africa. Most have long-term subtle morbidities such as abdominal pain, fatigue and diahorrea. Symptoms often overlap with other diseases found in the same areas, including malaria and intestinal worms. This results in complex, hard-to-monitor illnesses, making it difficult to know when a drug treatment or other intervention is successfully improving population health. The disease also reduces physical and cognitive development, school and work attendance and productivity, exacerbating the poverty cycle. Chronic infections cause severe organ damage, cancer and ~200,000 deaths a year. Despite 1 in 33 people in the world being infected and these devastating effects, control efforts lag behind diseases such as malaria, HIV and TB. Here Poppy Lamberton, Professor of Global Health at the University of Glasgow, explores how she is leading an interdisciplinary team aiming to identify cost-effective, sustainable interventions for schistosomiasis, a devastating neglected tropical disease.

This article examines the role of ideations in the de-problematization process of the governance of "migration crises". Ideations, for example, in the form of frames often simplify social reality and do not allow us to understand the nature of a problem policy-makers are dealing with. To show this, I use the example of the "European Migrant Crisis," to illustrate that it is, in fact, a wicked problem. The "wicked problem" concept describes a complex and contingent problem and, in essence, a set of "un-owned" processes. It further dissolves local and global distinctions and forces to connect micro and macro processes at all times. In this article, I show that this "migration crisis" (and also many others) consists of much more than just a humanitarian or security crisis but is also constituted by geopolitical crises and crises of political institutions. A relational approach seems most pertinent to be able to grasp all these aspects and helps us to stop de-problematizing it and instead problematize it adequately. It also advocates for the circumvention of ideations as they are a main source for the de-problematization of wicked problems.

In 1973, Horst W Rittel and Malvin A Webber introduced the term 'wicked problem' in planning theory. They describe spatial planning as dealing with inherent uncertainty, complexity and inevitable normativity. This contribution picks up the concept of wicked problems, reflects on it from a planning-theoretical perspective, and proposes the use of Cultural Theory's concept of clumsy solutions as a response to wicked planning problems. In discussing public participation processes in spatial planning, it is then shown what clumsy solutions mean for spatial planning. The four rationalities of Cultural Theory are then used to explain why public participation in planning can become wicked, and how these rationalities provide a response that copes with this wickedness.

What is the link between administrative capacity and wicked problems? Previous literature links capacity to standardized performance outputs, but little is known on the link between capacity and highly complex policy settings. This study examines health outcomes of the opioid crisis—a wicked problem with interdependencies across different drugs with multiple legal and illegal pathways for abuse and dependence. If capacity matters for wicked problems, administrative action should decompose the larger wicked problem into smaller, more achievable solutions. The findings suggest that administrative capacity may allow public organizations to simultaneously manage drug outcomes across the legal and illegal market.

Many international business (IB) issues are "wicked", requiring specific policymaking approaches and capabilities. COVID-19 has accentuated their wickedness, contributing also to global structural shifts, which pose significant challenges and opportunities for transformation policymaking. This commentary extends the second-generation wicked problem (WP) literature and proposes a third-generation WP approach focusing on morality and time, which have been often overlooked. Drawing on the WP literature, I propose three policymaking principles (i.e., time-sensitive logics, actioning a moral imperative, empathy, and reflexivity) and two types of meta-capabilities (i.e., resilience and entrepreneurial meta-capabilities). Time-sensitive logics sensitize decision-makers to cause-effect lags and help synch their approaches with governance, system and strategic policymaking logics. Actioning a moral imperative helps curb perverse managerial incentives to address only feasible WP parts. Empathy and reflexivity outline the importance of humanizing WPs and prompt decision-makers to reflect on their own mental models and biases when addressing WPs. Resilience meta-capabilities underscore anticipatory, coping, adaptive and transformative capabilities needed to address WPs in order to "bounce beyond adversity". Entrepreneurial meta-capabilities outline five entrepreneurial policymaking elements suited for addressing WPs. These principles and meta-capabilities can guide policymakers and managers to better navigate the wickedness of COVID-19 and address WPs beyond it.

A 'wicked problem' is a term used in the planning literature to characterise a complex multi-dimensional problem. The article argues that Indigenous child abuse is one such problem. Whatever the merits of the recent federal intervention into Northern Territory Indigenous communities, it is unlikely to succeed without both long-term bipartisan commitment of substantial resources and a meaningful process of consultation with Indigenous peoples. If we are to learn from what policies worked (and what did not work), then it is particularly important that a transparent evaluation framework be established before undertaking policy initiatives.