Decision Making / 4 / 4.9 / 4.9.10

4.9.10 Tame Vs. Wicked Problems—Responsibility

No one can be blamed for failing to solve a tame problem, although solving a tame problem may bring some acclaim. The wicked problem solver has ‘no right to be wrong’. He is morally responsible for what he is doing and must share the blame when things go wrong. However, since there is no way of knowing when a wicked problem is solved, very few people are praised for grappling with them.

As suggested above in relation to the Black Hawk helicopter crash, seeking, after the event, to find those responsible threatens learning opportunities. If learning was more effective, risk management would be similarly more effective. Problems would be routinely corrected and disasters averted.

The public demands that wicked problems are managed and, hence, politicians are bound to act. Similarly, shareholders rely on company directors and executives to avoid litigation that might follow an accident or an environmental disaster.

Anybody in authority who designs policy, develops plans and strategies, or makes decisions has a duty of care to those who might be affected by policies, strategies or decisions they create. Regardless of any legally defined duty of care, there are ethical duty of care considerations here. Churchman (1961; 1971) argues strongly that ethics are an integral part of decision making. Churchman spent his life dedicated to humanity and insists that scientists [policy designers, strategy developers and decision-makers, and the like] must take responsibility for the social consequences of their work. Legal or ethical duty of care is owed to all stakeholders who, knowingly or unwittingly, are affected.

Stakeholders include employees, shareholders, and the public. Duty of care can only be exercised with full ethical responsibility when policy designers, strategy developers, and decision-makers understand risks associated with their policies, strategies and decisions. If risks are ignored or are seriously misunderstood, by those who have a duty of care, they may well be abrogating their responsibilities to those that might be affected.

The nature of wicked problems involving risk mean we are unable to:

• definitively test that strategies we develop are appropriate or sufficient;
• find a ‘final’ version of the model that gives us confidence that we have correctly selected and defined the problem space; or
• faithfully replicate the problem to an extent that we have a very high degree of confidence in the model of the problem and strategies we might derive from the model. Each of these impact on our ability to fulfil the duty of care responsibilities to the extent advocated by Churchman. The practical implication is that strategies derived from risk assessment activities will be delivered with disclaimers about the extent to which strategies can be developed from such models. However, this may not be acceptable to stakeholders who see we problem solvers as ‘having no right to be wrong’.