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Wicked problems: turning strategic management upside down
Article in Journal of Business Strategy · January 2016
DOI: 10.1108/JBS-11-2014-0129
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“Wicked Problems and the Misalignment of
Strategic Management Design”
Charles McMillan
Schulich Business School,
York University
Toronto
(charlesmcmillansgi@gmail.com)
Jeffrey Overall
Ryerson University
Toronto
(jsoverall@ryerson.ca)
To Be Published in Journal of Business Strategy (Spring) 2015
January 2015
1
Introduction
Most decision-makers know well the challenges of environment complexity. While the
underlying causes are many, they include such factors as globalization of trade and
finance, the digital revolution and the Internet, the explosion of education and income
disparities. This new reality contains new forms of disorder, massive uncertainties and
volatility, unpredictable consequences, and severe disruptions of the corporate playing
field. How does society, in general, and strategic decision-makers in firms, universities,
and public bureaucracies, in particular, address these very complex management
discontinuities? Are strategy makers misaligning their internal decision structures to
address ill-structured problems?
The conventional doctrines of strategic management have, as their premise, the reduction
and control of disequilibria, unknowns, and random events. They focus on various
frameworks where the problems are known and understood, the means-end relationships
are complicated but deterministic, knowledge and expertise can be applied by using
formal mathematical models and conventional tools of linear analysis. The metrics of
efficiency and effectiveness can address fluctuations and deviance from expected norms.
In the past decades, corporate strategists, drawing on the huge academic literature, new
models in the corporate space, military strategists and the consulting world have made
great advances to address environmental uncertainty, knowledge complexity, and
industry oscillations. Theories of creative destruction as the inevitable process of market
economies, giving rise to new theories of disruptive technologies, Moore’s Law, and
constant innovation, affect all sectors, even a once staid, insular industry like automobiles
(Christensen, 1998; Schumpeter, 1942) 1 .
These issues of knowledge complexity and problem uncertainties raise many challenges
for corporate decision-makers. Do managers understand the appropriate tools to address
unconventional problems? Or are they tied to conventional thinking, assumptions, and
approaches to strategic decision-making? In their discourse, LaFlay and Martin (2013)
describe how to approach this dilemma: (1) be clear about what business to operate in, (2)
where to operate, (3) how to win, and; (4) what competencies are needed to consistently
outperform the competition.
This approach forms the core theories and models taught in business schools. As depicted
in Figure 1, corporate strategy models now are more comprehensive, shifting the
emphasis to include not just corporate positioning against competitors, but also
encompassing people issues, network alignments, and the management of ideas and
innovation in uncontested markets.
1
For over 100 years in the automotive industry, only three dramatic innovations occurred in 1904 (Ford’s
system of mass production), 1956 (Toyota’s system of lean production), and hybrid vehicles in the 1990s.
Since then, novelty and innovation occurs with the shift from ownership of vehicles to access to vehicle
services (such as Uber, Zipcar, and RelayRides), new dealership models (Tesla selling directly to
consumers), and new connectivity, such as vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication,
semiautonomous and fully autonomous driving, or connecting to the cloud.
2
Figure 1 – Changing the Focus of Corporate Strategy
The Four Ps of Strategy:
1970s – Price – Low Cost Leadership
1980s – Industry Position and Portfolio Analysis
1990s – Organizational Processes and Capabilities
2000 + - People, Networks, Sustainability
Price:
Cost Leadership
Positioning
Processes
People
Tools:
Scale, Experience
Curves,
Cost Analysis,
Industry structure and
supply curves
Tools:
BCG Growth/
Share Matrix
GE Matrix
McKinsey 7s
Scenarios
Tools:
Value Chain
Quality – TQM
Balanced Score
Board
Resource-Base
Time
Tools:
Collaboration
Strategic
Alliances
Networks
Blue Ocean
Cloud Computing
Source: Authors
Questions remain: are these tools the right strategic approaches needed for all markets,
strategic problems, and firms? Consider the following quote, describing the aftermath of
the 2008 Wall Street financial debacle (emphasis added):
Its 20 minutes before 4 p.m. in London and currency traders' screens are blinking
red and green. Some dealers have as many as 50 chat rooms crowded onto four
monitors arrayed in front of them like shields. Messages from salespeople and
clients appear, get pushed up by new ones and vanish from view. Orders are
barked through squawk boxes.
This is the closing ‘fix’, the thin slice of the day when foreign-exchange traders
buy and sell billions of dollars of currency in the largely unregulated $5.3trillion-a-day foreign-exchange market, the biggest in the world by volume,
according to the Bank for International Settlements. Their trades help set the
benchmark WM/Reuters rates used to value more than $3.6 trillion of index
funds held by pension holders, savers and money managers around the world.
Now regulators from Bern to Washington are examining evidence first reported
by Bloomberg News in June that a small group of senior traders at big banks had
something else on their screens: details of each other's client orders. Sharing
that information may have helped dealers at firms, including JPMorgan Chase &
Co., Citigroup Inc., UBS AG, and Barclays Plc, manipulate prices to maximize
their own profits, according to five people with knowledge of the probes.
3
"This is a market where there is no law and people have turned a blind eye,"
said former U.S. Sen. Ted Kaufman, a Delaware Democrat who sponsored
legislation in 2010 to shrink the largest U.S. banks. "We've been talking about
banks being too big to fail. What’s almost as big a problem is banks too big to
manage" (Vaughan, Finch, & Ivry, 2013, p. 1).
Such media accounts typify massive inconsistencies between model assumptions –
openness, competition, transparency, executive responsibility, and low risk – and the
reality of decision premises, a form of hypocrisy between mission goals and actual
behaviour. Most theories of strategic decision-making apply premises and assumptions of
rational behaviour and stable systems. In finance and the world of banking, actual
strategic behaviour differs wildly from the rational model of perfect competition, where
all the variables are known, where information is free and available, and where
computation of strategic choices and their consequences are examined in minute detail.
Indeed, the real world of corporate finance is the exact opposite. More generally, strategic
approaches to complex problems are misaligned with the problems themselves and
potentially make firms ill-equipped to address wicked problems with simplistic
approaches.
In this paper, we focus on wicked problems as the decision environment for strategic
management. Wicked problems cover such diverse topics as climate change, low costhealthcare, terrorism, security, extreme income disparity in a world of trade liberalization,
inner city poverty, white collar crime, and cyber crime. Other management problems are
numerous - the hidden and real cost of waste management, volatile global supply chains,
moral hazards in financial markets, and the organizational ecosystems to provide social
justice in an era of ethnic nationalism. These issues are challenging but rarely inflict high
risks for corporate misdemeanours. Wicked problems often arise when companies are
faced with the need to cope with constant change or to face new, unprecedented
challenges. Camillus (2008, p. 101) elaborates:
Wicked problems often crop up when organizations have to face constant
change or unprecedented challenges. They occur in a social context; the
greater the disagreement among stakeholders, the more wicked the
problem. In fact, it’s the social complexity of wicked problems as much as
their technical difficulties that make them tough to manage. Not all
problems are wicked; confusion, discord, and a lack of progress are telltale
signs that an issue might be wicked.
The signals of wicked problems involve: complexity with conflicts arising from multiple
but differing stakeholder views, social and attitudinal variables, varying sequential and
simultaneous pressures and timelines, possible presence of ideological precocity, and lack
of clarity on end-means relations. Very different approaches to address, understand, and
cope with wicked problems are needed.
4
The New Paradigm: Wicked Problems
Corporate finance issues and food supply products exemplify conventional problem
solving. Assumptions of caveat emptor, where customers know and understand the
products offered, and senior managers understand the causal impacts of product-market
linkages illustrate the contrast between conventional problems and wicked problems and
possible moral hazardous outcomes. Financial institutions in many countries defined their
products on the premise that they are conventional, and the Wall Street crash shows that
they are truly wicked problems.
Rittel (1972) is often credited as the author of the term ‘wicked problems.’ However,
Churchman (1967) used the term in a guest editorial of a special issue of Management
Science. In this, he defined wicked problems as “a class of social system problems, which
are ill-formulated; where the information is confusing; where there are many clients and
decision makers with conflicting values; and where the ramifications in the whole system
are thoroughly confusing (p. B142).” Wicked problems have various antecedents, are
difficult to define, and when conventional solutions are applied to them, the
consequences can be undesirable. Put differently, they are dynamically-complex, illstructured, problems that have highly uncertain causes and outcomes (Batie, 2008).
Contrary to wicked problems, Simon (1973) provides an efficient summary of the
characteristics of traditional, conventional problems:
1. Well-structured problems have norms of testing solutions with mechanical
processes using numbers;
2. A clear means-ends pattern between the problem or goal state, and future states to
be reached or considered as the solution state;
3. Knowledge application about the problem and problem states;
4. Clear accuracy of means-ends that govern the ‘external’ world;
5. Such conditions that allow practical amounts of computation and practical search
processes.
Individuals and firms address countless daily issues meeting the norms of conventional
problems, where continuities, not discontinuities, determine decision deliberation and
preferences. Such problems differ from wicked problems, as shown in Table 1,
highlighting the contrasts between conventional problems and wicked problems. Wicked
problems have characteristics that reach the headlines but most firms do not want to
address, in part because they require fundamentally different assumptions, thought
processes, and methods of solution.
In the corporate world, problem-solving and strategy-making reflect the playful images of
Machiavelli, deciding how managerial behaviour can shift corporate risk to the public
sector (‘heads I win, tails you lose’), allowing possibilities to make the external world a
captive stakeholder. Such strategy models reflect a desire for order, continuities,
sequential attention of problem-solving procedures, and consistency of belief systems
with decision preferences. In crisis, by contrast, organizational cohesion diminishes;
ambiguities, false choices, and intelligence failures arise from deep uncertainty of future
5
Table 1 - Characteristics of Problems: Conventional vs. Wicked Problems
Characteristics
1. Problems
Conventional
Clear definition of problem,
unknown solutions
Wicked
No clear definition of
problem – unknown and
changing solutions
2. Thought processes
Linear
Complex systems
3. Time dimension
Task completed when
No time solution, politically
problem solved
determinate
4. Nature of knowledge Scientific solutions by
Problem definition is
expertise
experts
function of stakeholder
views and perspectives
5. Outcomes
Outcome is either true or
Unknown outcome – may
false, successful or
be better, worse, or
unsuccessful
acceptable
6. Problem approach
Scientific, knowledge
Solutions are judgmental,
protocols
depending on stakeholder
views
7. Problem characteristic
Loose coupling
Tight coupling
8. Solutions characteristic Cause and effect analysis
Multiple feedback analyses
9. Value system
Shared values of outcomes
Values are in dispute, or in
conflict
Source: Adapted from Batie (2008) and based on Kreuter et al. (2004).
actions predicated on low individual and organizational trust. As Katz and Kahn (1967, p.
188) put it, “… praise and blame have one set of means when they come from a trusted
source and another when they stem from untrusted sources”.
Individuals address conventional problems daily, often informed by habits, past
experience, protocols, and routines. For example, a medical doctor undertaking a patient
diagnosis combines her stock of knowledge from memory, her colleagues’ advice, and
certain tools (e.g., blood tests) as the basis to prescribe medical treatment to find
acceptable solutions. Managers, on the contrary, apply software tools, judgement, and
forecasts to stock shelves with replenished inventory based on past, current, and expected
sales. Strategies and heuristics, or rules of thumb, which allow decision-makers to search
for solutions to conventional problems, may become inappropriate to address wicked
problems.
Strategic Nature of Wicked Problems
In today’s complex world, tools of strategy, such as forecasting, SWOT analysis,
competitive forces, lifecycle models, and portfolio and scenario analysis stem from
assumptions, premises, and theories drawn mainly from microeconomics. Unfortunately,
real world social systems displaying novelty, disruptive change, and social dynamics are
not governed by stable, linear causal mechanisms. More specifically, the modern views
6
of strategic management suggest that models and expectations of linear approaches
leading to ‘optimal’ decisions with premises of cause and effect. Put differently, strategy
‘A’ leads to structural outcome ‘B’ with optimal performance outcome ‘C’. It is then
necessary to fold the two states, before and after, to show that the strategic tools and
mechanisms causes or impact the target state, using varying assumptions are of limited
value to real understandings of expected outcomes.
Horn (1981), addressing wicked problems, contends that “… a social mess is a set of
interrelated problems and other messes. Complexity—systems of systems—is among the
factors that makes social messes so resistant to analysis and, more importantly, to
resolution.” Ackoff (1974) contended that there are three categories of wicked problems:
puzzles (well-defined with optimal solutions), problems (well-defined but no single
solution), and messes (hard to formulate). In real life and in organizations of diverse
kinds, the butterfly effect sows how nonlinearity usually results in unpredictable
outcomes. Weather, the stock-market, human and environmental health, novel products
or processes, NIMBY infrastructure pressures for firms, and sociopolitical adversary
groups are examples of unpredictable, nonlinear systems. Traditional approaches using
bureaucratic systems fail to address wicked problems because their uncertainty
characteristics require collaboration that enhances intellectual knowledge diffusion, joint
learning, and understanding how one issue can be a symptom of a related problem.
Effective collaboration demands a shared consensus on the problem definition, which
fosters commitment of alternative solutions, and understanding of feedback mechanisms
and mean-ends relationships. There are several aspects associated with defining complex
problems including recognizing that a problem exists, and a clear picture of the
measurable and immeasurable uncertainties and risks. Wicked problems require a
decision process of structuring and restructuring, in which solutions emerge only
gradually through a process of defining external and internal constraints. How one
defines the problem affects the attempts to solve it. In this definitional context, the
concept of task environment is essential, and its analysis means that tasks possess
characteristics which the initial state can be transformed to the goal state. Collaboration
requires intellectual exercises and experiential learning to allow executives to learn and
harness the collaborative skills necessary to address wicked problems. It is therefore most
important to establish the choices that satisfy the requirements of a solution (Goel &
Pirolli, 1992).
Wicked problems are rarely dealt with in the C-suite, except perhaps only under extreme
crisis. Conventional models ignore the extremely complex causal relations and feedback
mechanisms. They apply to decision problems of relative stability, linearity, simple
causal mechanisms in the environment and the classical, hierarchical information flows.
These strategic frameworks may be highlighted with mathematical and technical
virtuosity, but disguise the true nature of many problems, assumptions of probabilistic
inferences, and the explanatory powers of feedback and underlying causes. Strategies
often tolerate the organizational hypocrisy of stated ends and actual results.
7
Similarly, wicked problems are rarely addressed in the core MBA curriculum. As
depicted in Figure 2, business strategy textbooks, case studies, models, and tools fostered
by consulting firms and their in-house journals often ignore wicked problems. Even
worse, they address wicked problems with solutions that apply only to problems with
well-defined probabilistic solutions. Models of traditional problem-solving hierarchical
decision-making fail to understand the complicated interdependencies of wicked
problems. Why? Conventionally, organizations cultivate measures of self-sufficiency or
closed-systems thinking. These approaches parallel the organizational decision processes
well-known in supply chain management called the bullwhip effect, where problems elicit
information distortion, weak demand signal false impressions from data flows, naïve or
poor forecasting emits reliance on past routines. Decision command structures (McMillan,
2010) become misaligned, from distorted information intelligence, erratic decision
processes, shifting participants, and misunderstanding problem definitions with problem
solutions.
Strategic misalignments arise when organizations use a decision-making system designed
to address environmental uncertainties that assume linear models with limited cognitive
complexity and computational deliberation. Indeed, the seeds of simple failure, leading to
catastrophic failure, rest in organizational hierarchies where dominant coalitions – senior
managers and boards – display false reactions, such as a confirmation bias, where
executives overestimate how others accept their belief systems, and where core
assumptions are not assessed (March & Olsen, 1966).
High
Figure 2 - Conventional MBA Curriculum and Wicked Problem Solving
Low
Level of Uncertainty
Wicked
Problems of
Corporations &
Society
Problem Solving
In
Conventional
MBA Curriculum
Low
Value Conflict
High
Source: Authors
The second is an anchor bias, where evidence is quickly accepted that supports existing
assumptions while contrary opinions are downplayed or rejected. In this way, hostility
toward critics is heightened in the hierarchy (Roxburgh, 2003) especially if decisionmakers fail to produce real solutions and, as a result, dire unintended consequences occur.
In crisis, shifting technologies and information uncertainty suggest that organizations
8
focus on ambiguities at all levels. In some quarters, studies of intractable problems lead
to theories of chaos and complexity, where linear thinking precludes problem-solving on
complex dynamic issues. These traditional processes can be fatal when addressing
wicked problems.
Managing Problem-Solving Models with Strategic Alignment
How do wicked problems challenge the cognitive systems of conventional managerial
behaviour? Sheer complexity, to be sure, but inexperience, novelty, and weak sensemaking constantly test the orientation of ill-structured problems and the design choices.
Cognitive psychologists now understand that such sense-making leads to ambiguities of
conflict resolution, with inherent biases to conflate numbers and measurement with
importance. Understanding the nature of wicked problems, and appreciating approaches
to address them, represent a strategic design challenge. Past experience and historical
precedents may prejudge appropriate views of success, or even the people to address the
issues. Clearly, deviations from the norm defy conventions of what is appropriate.
Misalignment of managers’ sense-making or, in other words, the vital managerial
capacity to recognize, understand, and interpret inherent complexity in the environment
(Weick, 1979) can lead to costly and possibly catastrophic errors (see Figure 3).
Figure 3 – Alignment of Problem-solving and Nature of Problems
Nature of Problems
Conventional
Business
Model
Planning
Misalignment of
Problem-Solving
and
Wicked Problems
Advanced
Strategic
Planning
Alignment:
Managing High
Risk Problem
Solving
Low
Risk
Managerial
SenseMaking
High
Risk
Wicked
Source: Authors
These issues are especially evident in knowledge-intensive firms that are platformdependent. An organizational platform is a strategic design that configures people,
technology, and coordination processes that combine the tightly-coupled rule features of
machine bureaucracy (i.e., exploitation) with highly flexible, loosely-coupled organic
features of exploration. Exploitation involves cultivating knowledge that is already
accepted, while exploitation often takes precedence at the expense of exploration. The
recent grounding of the Boeing-580 Dreamliner illustrates the new skill-sets needed to
address the platform complexity of global ecosystems of supply chains, logistics and
supply clusters. The contrast between 20th century models of loosely-coupled structures
9
and the complexity of and tightly-coupled systems challenges new approaches to
problem-solving. As Dyer (1994, p. 176) suggests “…a tightly integrated production
network, dedicating supplier assets to the customer, will virtually always outperform a
loosely-coupled production network”.
Systems design, often seen in platform engineering, show qualitatively novel features,
away from deterministic and probabilistic (often called stochastic), where there is
knowledge (or good estimates) of the probability distribution of future events to uncertain
and emergent systems of massive absence of knowledge. Platforms function as an
extended network value-chain under a generic organizational ecosystem umbrella, with
intense interaction processes including parts and component suppliers and output
distributors tailored to meet specific customer needs with variants within common
structures. Platform organizations center flexible, mass customization models with high
variety, speed, reduced lead-time, and high reliability (March & Olsen, 1966).
The risks of strategic misalignment, based on executive attention focusing not only to the
wrong issues but with a closed mindset to the nature of wicked problems, may seem
obvious. Executive behaviour reflects coalition politics that allows senior managers to
mold firm identity, competences, and problem attention by controlling communication
tools, issue agendas, luxury goods, and promotion positions that preserve power and
status (March & Olsen, 1966). In general, steady economic growth, often thanks to
government policies that calibrate the economy and to rectify oscillations of long tailed
outcomes, allow corporations the opportunity to retain traditional strategic management
tools. However, today’s corporate landscape means that wicked problems are not
addressed, and conventional approaches to problem-solving are in reality incremental
adjustments. The result is potential misalignment of corporate approaches to strategy, and
possible catastrophic failure from the full implications of ill-structured systems, even
though it may take years to realize the full impacts.
These transformations change the nature of corporate risk and risk assessment. The
intensity of knowledge in the design and engineering of products and services – smart
phones, hybrid vehicles, nuclear power plants, and aerospace products – illustrate new
demands of risk management, because their design features increase risks of failure with
potentially catastrophic consequences. Charles Perrow (1984), studying high risk
organizations such as nuclear power plants, addresses two dimensions of wicked systems.
The first is the degree of inter-active complexity, with the potential of deeply-rooted
ignorance about how variables interact or can be foreseen, understood, or managed. The
second is tight coupling, the design system of tight, procedural and sequential flows of
each subsystem where the failure of one, with little buffering or redundancy, can result in
catastrophic failure of the entire system.
Variability coordination is, however, not a trivial activity and needs high-levels of
training, collaborative decision-making, long-term perspectives, but if successful
becomes very difficult to replicate. Toyota pioneered lean production, with its Tier 1 and
Tier 2 supplier network, now widely applied in industries as diverse as healthcare and
aircraft production (Tang & Zimmerman, 2009). Problems that are perceptual, or data
10
driven, start at the bottom of the human cognitive system. Problem-solving of illstructured problems, by contrast, start at the top of the cognitive system. Combining goaldirected to data-directed processing is linked to more knowledgeable expertise (Simon &
Gilmartin, 1973). Without extreme conditions of training, expertise, and a culture of
safety, platform models can fail precipitously (Vaughan, 1996).
Conclusion
Conventional strategy management models presume reasonable stability in the task
environment, in the nature of the feedback mechanisms (e.g., information and social
relations) and the organizational design features that weaken the interactions and direct
participation of activities of those decision-makers who make strategic choices and those
who are removed in time and space from direct organizational activities. Wicked problem
solving removes a culture of denial, quick adaptation to simple failure, and short-term
repairs to communications feedback. Wicked problem-solving is by temperament and
time horizon, a multilayered, multitasked, organizational challenge, and requires
fundamentally different mindsets for design and performance systems for senior
executives. Organizational pathologies rest in executive action: pursuit of goals and
objectives with a false sense of causation, feedback filters that exaggerate good news and
restrict bad news, and actions that given only token measures to correct faulty design
decisions and faulty decision processes, including more emphasis on vertical channels
than horizontal task interdependencies.
Indeed, wicked problems are a fact of life in a global world, changing profoundly the
nature of strategic management, where management faces a deep paradox – an
environment of unprecedented interdependence yet unpredictable forces of chaos and
volatility, a landscape of wicked problems. Infectious diseases, terrorism, climate change,
and social catastrophes such as tsunamis and earthquakes are everyday occurrences.
Strategic management now faces the prospect of a dramatic shift, away from reasonable
deterministic models to address uncertainty – the firm as a portfolio of industries and
technologies, a collection of distinct businesses and decision problems – to a collection of
wicked problems with indeterminate solutions. As governments are incapable of
addressing guerilla warfare and terrorism using conventional military tactics,
organizations are also unable to address wicked problems using the traditional tools of
strategic management. Executive preferences impact signals of past actions, memory
recall, and weak feedback mechanisms. Indeed, the study of wicked problems requires a
new corporate mindset, new collaborative models to address them, and new corporate
processes and executive training tools who increasingly have to address them.
The status quo state of denial is ending and strategists now require a new, multidisciplined approach to address wicked problems. A focused attention and recognition of
historical, social, and technological impacts, with new strategic methodologies are vital.
New skill sets needed for wicked problem-solving must include tools and models of the
conventional MBA curriculum. However, as once mighty brands like IBM, Coca-Cola,
and McDonald’s illustrate, disruptive change is more than technological or financial. The
corporate environment encompasses very complicated social and political dimensions
11
that are the characteristics of wicked problems where simple, linear, and deterministic
models will not provide optimal or even acceptable outcomes.
12
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