Editorial: Silent Spring: can we fix wicked problems?

2022 marks the 60^th anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring. The book provoked the formation of the environmental movement that combined with scientific disquiet about climate change to become the global movement that exists today. Silent Spring grew out of Carson’s work as a marine biologist and is replete with concise observations that remain applicable to those engaged in environmental work today—especially concerns over loss of bio-diversity. For example, she noted that:

Nature has introduced great variety into the landscape, but man has displayed a passion for simplifying it. Thus he undoes the built-in checks and balances by which nature holds the species within bounds (Carson, 1962).

When we combine this literature with that of Rittel and Webber (1973), and subsequent authors that identified the issue of ‘wicked’ problems, it becomes obvious that the interconnectedness of the issues involved have often proved inflexible to policy-makers over the last half century.

Wicked problems are nothing new to policy-makers, but there is something unique regarding climate change and its existential threat. Christopher Pollitt saw this clearly (2015) and called for the academic discipline of public administration and public management practitioners to address ways of tackling the continuing problems. An essential element of this is to explore innovative perspectives. Accordingly we begin this February 2022 (Vol. 42, No. 2) issue of Public Money & Management (PMM) with a debate article by Sandra Cohen that explores the relevance of accounting for exploring the sustainable development goals and climate change. She argues that ‘Climate change is a massive challenge for humanity but its relationship to accounting may seem remote’ (Cohen, 2021). Public sector institutions, however, are increasingly adopting reporting practices to disclose actions and performance measures related to the environment. But, as Cohen argues, the problem of assigning ‘monetary values to delicate issues can be extremely difficult and, in some cases, inappropriate. The inherent difficulties of monetizing actions or omissions that impact the natural environment create a vague picture’.

Our second debate article, by XiaoHu Wang and Jingyuan Xu, also explores a difficult, if not wicked, problem: namely of the central government’s role in policy implementation in China. Publications informed by research into understanding governance in China have been a priority for non-Chinese scholars and practitioners for over a generation and remain a principal area of significance. Wang and Xu argue that: ‘A key feature in policy implementation in China, significantly distinctive from many other countries, is a strong and strategic engagement of the central government in local policy implementation’ (Wang & Xu, 2021). The authors suggest a capacity-building perspective to understand the efficacy and costs of this centrally-imposed approach in policy implementation in response to the recognition of the tensions and problems this centrally-driven delivery of policy causes for the country. This is important because a problem for China can rapidly become a global issue.

Public Money & Management seeks to publish both debate and new development articles to draw attention to innovations in research and professional practice. This issue concludes with three new development articles. The first is by Pat Barrett AO who, as a Distinguished Honorary Professor at the Australian National University and former Auditor-General of Australia, combines practice with academic credentials. His article argues that given:

 … questions about the role and performance of auditing, the challenges faced by public sector auditors are how to not only maintain the confidence of governments/parliaments and the general public but also to show the usefulness and relevance of audit processes, findings and recommendations in an environment that is significantly adjusting and evolving to a ‘new normal’ (Barrett, 2021).

The new development article by Zaki and George (2021), ‘Policy learning and public management—a match made in crisis’, argues for an expanded horizon in terms of expertise at the policy design phase, using public management experts and practitioners at the policy design phase in order to utilize their in-field experience.

The final article in this issue, by Ian Hodgkinson, Sahar Mousavi and Paul Hughes, brings us back to wicked problems. They explore ‘the role citizen science can play in discovering new solutions to pressing wicked problems’. Using illustrations of citizen science projects they ‘show how and where citizens have been fundamental in creating solutions and driving change’, and they call for ‘wider recognition and use of citizen science in public administration and management research’ (Hodgkinson et al., 2021).

We welcome research articles in these fields, perhaps nudged in that direction by the debate and new development articles in this issue.

The research articles in this issue are, as usual for PMM, a wide and varied collection. There are several that deal with health services in public administration, but explore different countries and different aspects of healthcare and management. We begin with an article by Powell et al. (2021) that analyses the reports of public inquiries to reveal how little these inquiries examined the role of the whistleblower and how rarely they made any recommendations concerning NHS whistleblowing. The authors examine the case of the ‘disappearing whistleblower’ and suggest reasons for the limited focus on them. Next, Gregori and Carles (2020) discuss the hypothesis that buyer power improves efficiency in a national health service. They argue that the results of their study provide evidence that buyer power has a positive effect on hospitals’ technical efficiency. Performance and expenditure in Italian public healthcare organizations is the subject of the article by Spano et al. (2020) who analyse the effect of expenditure on the performance of Italian healthcare organizations—they argue their results show an improvement in performance over time, regardless of changes in total expenditure.

The final articles in this issue range across topics as diverse and informative as co-creation and public value (Casula et al., 2020); social impact bonds (Pastore & Corvo, 2020); performance measurement (Dhillon, 2020); and public efficiency in Tokyo (Vu Tran & Noguchi, 2020).

The world today is remarkably different to that of Rachel Carson’s in 1962 and the publication of her ground-breaking work, but we are still wrestling with many of the intractable and wicked issues faced by her contemporaries; the difference is that we have new tools and more knowledge with which to address them. In PMM, we will continue to publish this knowledge as and when research and best practice make it available to us.