Wicked Problems in Public Policy

This is an open access book. This book offers the first overview of the ‘wicked problems’ literature, often seen as complex, open-ended, and intractable, with both the nature of the ‘problem’ and the preferred ‘solution’ being strongly contested. It contextualises the debate using a wide range of relevant policy examples, explaining why these issues attract so much attention. There is an increasing interest in the conceptual and practical aspects of how ‘wicked problems’ are identified, understood and managed by policy practitioners. The standard public management responses to complexity and uncertainty (including traditional regulation and market-based solutions) are insufficient. Leaders often advocate and implement ideological ‘quick fixes’, but integrative and inclusive responses are increasingly being utilised to recognise the multiple interests and complex causes of these problems. This book uses examples from a wide range of social, economic and environmental fields in order to develop new insights about better solutions, and thus gain broad stakeholder acceptance for shared strategies for tackling ‘wicked problems’

Wicked Problems in Public Policy

This is an open access book. This book offers the first overview of the ‘wicked problems’ literature, often seen as complex, open-ended, and intractable, with both the nature of the ‘problem’ and the preferred ‘solution’ being strongly contested. It contextualises the debate using a wide range of relevant policy examples, explaining why these issues attract so much attention. There is an increasing interest in the conceptual and practical aspects of how ‘wicked problems’ are identified, understood and managed by policy practitioners. The standard public management responses to complexity and uncertainty (including traditional regulation and market-based solutions) are insufficient. Leaders often advocate and implement ideological ‘quick fixes’, but integrative and inclusive responses are increasingly being utilised to recognise the multiple interests and complex causes of these problems. This book uses examples from a wide range of social, economic and environmental fields in order to develop new insights about better solutions, and thus gain broad stakeholder acceptance for shared strategies for tackling ‘wicked problems’

A New Kind of Data Science: The Need for Ethical Analytics

Ethics can no longer be regarded as an add-on in data science and analytics. This paper argues for the necessity of formalizing a new, practically-oriented sub-discipline of AI ethics by outlining the needs, highlighting shortcomings in current approaches, and providing a framework for ethical analytics, which is concerned with the study of the ethical issues surrounding the development, deployment, and/or dissemination of ML/AI systems and data science research, as well as the development of tools and procedures to mitigate ethical harms. While data science and machine learning are primarily concerned with data from start to finish, ethical analytics is concerned primarily with people – moral agents, the groups and societies they comprise, and the world they inhabit. Ethical analytics should be seen as complementary to the more techno-abstracted analytic disciplines, interfacing with the nuanced, ethical issues that stem from ill-defined or vague, socially-relative normative concepts. It studies the issues that arise in this holistic sociotechnical environment, and it seeks to develop concrete solutions or interventions where possible – from mathematics and algorithms to procedures and protocols

Designed agency in collaborations: Exploring cross-sector collaboration in Finland’s artificial intelligence programme AuroraAI.

Prospects of advanced digitalisation, namely applications of algorithmic computation and artificial intelligence, are expected to improve data-driven decision-making in business and government alike. Overshadowed by this vast momentum in technology and predicted progress, societal questions of human dignity and democratic participation in anticipation of futures are fading out of attention. Cross-sector collaborations in the public sector are perceived as a viable means to address complex socio-technical problems, such as the above, as part of an emerging shift from market- and performance-focused governance and towards public good. Simultaneously, the discipline of design, increasingly permeating other fields, sees progressive application in the public realm where it provides encouraging means of participatory engagement to support the reorientation of governance towards the human being. My research takes a critical perspective on the preliminary, pre-2020, preparations of AuroraAI, the Finnish national programme for artificial intelligence, and interconnected cross-sectoral service provision. By developing a human-centric lens of design, the mixed-methods study constructively investigates barriers in the collaborative development and how these closely relate to the currently present and omitted actors and their respective agency. Normative aspects inherent to questions of fair participation in the creation of public good and joint futures are substantiated with the reviewed literature ranging from design to political theory. The thesis highlights the importance of actively nurturing intangible structures of trust and mutual understanding to establish ownership and equity in decision-making. Different levels of agency among actors in the programme appear to be profoundly determined by consciously and unconsciously taken design choices regarding the structures that create the foundations for the processes of collaborative engagement. If agency is the capacity of an actor to exert power in a given context, this capacity can be deliberately or unintentionally limited and expanded; hence agency is open to be designed towards a preferred level of capacity. In the context of collaborations, designed structures, rules and norms then become the main lever to manipulate agency and thereby power dynamics, according to prefigured values and principles. Thus far, the collective agency in AuroraAI seems to be affected by the ramifications of structural limitations regarding actor involvement, open communication and the collaborative engagement regarding a partly prefigured techno-centric agenda. I propose a strategic reframing towards jointly deliberated values of public good within a wider network of actors in their self-determination of digital futures. Structures that guarantee continuous public engagement are not only considered a matter of principle but as a direct means for sustaining relational trust between the government and civil society, as well as to augment internal goal consistency and enhanced legitimacy. Hence, the study acknowledges the design of agency via formal and informal structures to be the reflection and reproduction of value-decisions regarding power dynamics in a collaboration and its political environment

ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge

Action Learning Sets to foster organizational learning and innovation

Organizations strive to offer employee learning opportunities and instill innovation practices, yet few exercises are found to be deliberately embedded in everyday routines. Based in an educational institution, this study concerns a group of faculty and staff of a specific department in a Community College (in Ontario, Canada), and creates a structured opportunity to afford habitual organizational learning practices rooted in Action Research. This study implemented an Action Learning Set to investigate how learning occurs when employees willingly participate and consciously create collaborative conversations over time. Existing work in the realm of Action Learning are intentionally considered to make this qualitative study more meaningful. Action Research is used as a required methodology of my DBA endeavour and also becomes a foundational basis for the tool itself i.e. Action Learning Set, thus making it a unique arrangement from a scholar-practitioner perspective. Set exchanges focus on individual and group dialoguing using action research spirals and these interactions are carried into a virtual environment as well, to trace the lived experiences of the group. In assessing the synergy created via such action, the study goes a step further to connect tacit theoretical understanding of action-based learning with the notion of Hot Groups, known for its spontaneous, creative and determined sense of purpose. Journal notes, observational field notes, and a debrief survey involving post session sharing generated rich data and these information sources were coded, analysed and interpreted as common themes for discussion. The Action Learning Set is a shared space that becomes a vehicle for participant insight to learn more about themselves, their peer and their organization. With the confluence and commonalities of action-related notions, and certain unprompted movements that were observed, this study also throws light on participants who worked together, how or why they chose those paths, and what circumstances contributed to such decisions in working and learning as a team or independently. Therein, the research uses multiple cycles of Action Research to identify new knowledge, understand and explore findings, and cultivate stronger organizational learning and innovation practices. It is argued that unless a planned method to navigate and nurture exists, learning often remains disjointed or in silos. An intentional process can manoeuvre, and curate insight otherwise confined to cubicles. Actionable knowledge from this thesis points at organizational needs including structured, mindful learning engagements and creation of shared spaces, especially within the community college framework. It is also reflective of what emerged from using an Action Research-based methodology, i.e. having a disruptive mindset to embrace innovation, awareness of organizational politics and those who endorse such thinking, virtualization of Action Learning Sets and use of technology to nurture seamless dialogue. This thesis underscores the value of tangible processes in engaging stakeholders through mutually beneficial learning and innovation practices, in tapping into leaderful behavior of organizational members, and the ways in which this knowledge can contribute to future projects for scholar practitioners, as a model within the post-secondary landscape