Together with increased shares of renewable energy supply, improved energy efficiency is the foremost means of mitigating climate change. However, the energy efficiency potential is far from being realized, which is commonly explained by the existenc...
Transformability is increasingly promoted as a way of moving societies toward more sustainable futures in the era of the Anthropocene, mostly because the concept of resilience has fallen short in many instances where impacts on social-ecological syst...
Athlete maltreatment in organized sport has attracted considerable attention from governing bodies, stakeholders and the general public. Despite numerous studies and policy proposals from various countries, the problem remains unresolved due to its i...
The increasing prevalence of wicked problems, such as climate change, requires a transformation in education that equips students with the skills, competencies and knowledge to address these complex challenges. Wicked problems are characterised by th...
The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the energy transition as part of prosumer capitalism is a socio-economic process whose complexity increases over time, which makes it an example of a super wicked problem. It comprises many new...
The climate crisis has been dubbed a “super wicked problem”—one where there is a sense of urgency, complicity in the problem by those who wish to solve it, and difficulty in sacrificing the short term for the long term. To respond t...
Although Eurasia’s Caspian basin once supported the world’s richest and most diverse complex of sturgeon species, recent human activities have decimated populations of these ecologically and economically important fish. All five anadromou...
This paper explores the complex nature of land reforms, arguing that they should be considered wicked policy problems by focusing on the Hellenic Land Administration Reform (HLAR). The article reflects on recent contributions that argue that the HLAR...
16 September 2024
Dementia care research has largely ignored the challenges that may emerge from couple and family dynamics, especially about second partnerships in blended families. This paper details the case of a 79-year-old man, Hannes, in his second partnership w...
2 June 2018
Recent reviews on the evidence base for mental health related stigma reduction show that under certain conditions interpersonal contact is effective in promoting more positive attitudes, reduced desire for social distance, and increased stigma relate...
Transition from the status quo to more sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices is a highly complex and non-linear process with multiple drivers, but also obstacles, on the way. The impending strict regulatory framework, particularly in t...
The Ili River originates in the mountains of Xinjiang, China, and flows across an increasingly arid landscape before terminating in Kazakhstan’s Lake Balkhash, which has no outlet to the ocean. The river has been extensively impounded and diver...
Old-growth forest is an often-used term that seems to be intuitively understood by ecologists and forest managers, and the wide-ranging discussion of its social and ecological values suggests it has currency among the general public as well. However,...
Most social problems are “wicked”, meaning that they are highly complex, intractable, open-ended, and multi-dimensional. In wicked learning environments, information is ambiguous, feedback may be slow, or causes and effects are difficult...
This paper discusses the ways in which digitally enabled transformation in mathematics education could envisage a role for rationality in post-normal science and wicked problems. The scene is set firstly by reviewing the ways in which digital media h...
Historically, academia has paid much attention to environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) associated hypotheses, and the EKC per se has triggered conflicting reactions since first posited. Yet, all controversies seem not to have any base framework to addre...
The global space economy, valued at approximately USD 400–630 billion (depending on definitional scope), is projected to expand rapidly, crossing USD 1 trillion as early as 2032 and reaching up to about USD 1.8 trillion by 2035. This growth has...
The 21st century has been the warmest period on record since 1880, making the problem of climate change a central issue in the global political arena. While most approaches to climate change emphasize setting and imposing thresholds for greenhouse ga...
It is often uncritically assumed that, when digital technologies are integrated into the operation of city functions, they inevitably contribute to sustainable urban development. Such a notion rests largely on the belief that Information and Communic...
Italian New Public Management (NPM) has been mainly characterized by a political orientation toward power decentralization to local governments and privatization of public companies. Nowadays, local utilities in Italy are often run by joint stock co...
Heritage management in infrastructure planning is in this paper regarded as a ‘wicked problem’—A multidimensional and unpredictable activity infused with conflicting stakeholder perspectives. By focusing on the West Link and drawing on theoretical no...
28 January 2021
While accessible housing is known as important to promote healthy ageing, the societal issue of providing accessible housing for the ageing population bears the characteristics of a “wicked problem”. The aim of this study was to gain a be...
The increasing use of AI in different societal contexts intensified the debate on risks, ethical problems and bias. Accordingly, promising research activities focus on debiasing to strengthen fairness, accountability and transparency in machine learn...
The migration crisis was and, in some aspects, still is one of the biggest challenges that the European Union (EU) has faced recently. In the crisis peak in 2015/16, most of its member states were affected in different ways. This paper contributes to...
The achievement of sustainable development (SD) in the supply of minerals poses significant challenges for governments and public administrations on all levels, because ensuring a sustainable supply constitutes a “wicked” problem that has no clear se...
24 April 2013
Young children being injured at home is a perennial problem. When parents of young children and family workers discussed what influenced parents’ perceptions and responses to child injury risk at home, both “upstream” and “downstream” causal factors...
Various sectors of stakeholders (urban, agricultural, policymakers, etc.) are frequently engaged in participatory research projects aimed at improving water resources’ sustainability. However, a process for comprehensive and integrative identif...
Island systems have limited geographical, ecological, and social capacity to metabolize waste materials produced by the economic activities of their growing populations. Conceptualized as a ‘wicked problem’, the faults and weaknesses in w...
Because of hyper-complexity, a difficulty to define, multiple stakeholders with conflicting perspectives, and a lack of clear-cut solutions, wicked problems necessitate innovative and adaptive strategies. Operations research (OR) has been a valuable...
We have always had and will always have “disruptive” or “dysfunctional” doctors behaving unprofessionally within healthcare institutions. Disruptive physician behaviour (also called “unprofessional behaviour”) was...
Central Asia’s arid lowland ecosystems are dependent on water that originates in nearby mountains and is carried by rivers to terminal lakes and freshwater seas with no outlets to the ocean. Fish traditionally thrived in these waterways, but they hav...
Managing environmental resources in a nexus manner is typically denoted as a highly wicked problem. Such denotations are, however, barely based on clearly defined dimensions and degrees of wickedness. This hinders the application of effective policy...
This study evaluates the reasons and factors making soil pollution by poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) a wicked problem, reflecting upon the nature, persistence, mobility, and bioaccumulative properties of these compounds. The current regu...
Fresh water and arable land are essential for agricultural production and food processing. However, managing conflicting demands over water and land can be challenging for business leaders, environmentalists and other stakeholders. This paper charact...
Marketplaces are almost as old as humanity. They result from trade and trade is structured by political, religious, social, and economic needs. Overtime, marketplaces have woven together relational processes representing each of these, in order to ho...
Vibocracy refers to societal conditions in which public life and decision-making are shaped by affective resonance, performative legitimacy, and unstable epistemic frames, often amplified by algorithmic media and neo-oral communication environments....
The implementation of the UN’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 integra...
Wicked problems defy simple solutions. From climate change to mass shootings, their causes are not singular but systemic, interconnected, and often politicized. Yet in both public discourse and policy design, one-cause and root-cause thinking continu...
Governance for complex problem solving has been increasingly discussed in environmental sustainability research. Above all, researchers continuously observe that sustainability problems are complex or “wicked”, and suggest participatory models to add...
Increasing gender equality, United Nations Sustainable Development Goal Five (UN SDG 5), is one of many wicked problems that are difficult to solve in sport. Innovative policies may create a backdrop for improving women’s career outcomes in spo...
Global food insecurity levels remain stubbornly high. One of the surest ways to grasp the scale and consequence of global inequality is through a food systems lens. In a predominantly urban world, urban food systems present a useful lens to engage a...
The fallibility of intervening in complex realities is widely recognized in planning theory. The prevailing planning approaches of the last two decades may be summarized as attempts to make planning more responsive, corrective, and resilient, and als...
Though many scientists and scholars of the environmental humanities are referring to the current geological era as the anthropocene, this article argues that there are some problems with this trope and the narrative that emerges from it. First, respo...
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...
The Water Framework Directive (WFD) is typically a framework directive that tries to encourage integration of policies for water quality and agriculture. Nutrients (nitrates, phosphates) from agricultural sources remain a ‘wicked problem’ in realizin...
Climate change is a wicked problem, defying simple resolution. Education in various forms and at various levels has sought to improve understanding and stimulate climate change action in young people. There exists, however, a certain wickedness in ed...
COVID-19 is a wicked problem for policy makers internationally as the complexity of the pandemic transcends health, environment, social and economic boundaries. Many countries are focusing on two key responses, namely virus containment and financial...
In this review, we discuss animal welfare as a complex and contested issue facing society and outline why collaborative, multi-stakeholder approaches are critical for effective policy development. Using the lens of “wicked problems” and d...
The aim of this article is to complement research on transformations towards sustainability by drawing upon the innovation systems (IS) framework. The IS framework already serves as a suitable and influential basis for research on processes of techno...
In this paper, we focus on different roles in citizen science projects, and their respective relationships. We propose a tripartite model that recognises not only citizens and scientists, but also an important third role, which we call the ‘enabler’....
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