Assessing the relevance of governmental characteristics to address wicked problems in turbulent times

ABSTRACT

Governments have long faced traditional bureaucratic problems and developed a set of mechanisms to handle them, but few studies have examined the government’s underlying characteristics in addressing such problems. Wicked problems – those with unclear definitions, causal complexity and conflicting goals – are increasingly emerging and are frequently observed in highly turbulent environments – those where variables behave in unpredictable ways. We study the relevance of a range of governmental characteristics during the COVID-19 pandemic and find that, while all government characteristics are sometimes relevant, no single characteristic is always relevant and so they are best treated as a portfolio.

KEYWORDS:

• Wicked problems
• turbulence
• COVID-19
• QCA
• government
• technology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2022.2124535.

Notes

1. We appreciate this framing that was brought to us by one of our anonymous reviewers.

2. We appreciate this phrasing from one of our anonymous reviewers.

3. This is not suggest that no pre-planning had been done for a pandemic. Prior to leaving office, U.S. President Obama left a document entitled, “Playbook for Early Response to High Consequence Emerging Infection Disease Threats and Biological Incidents”. We thank one of our anonymous reviewers for bringing this to our attention.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

James S. Denford

James S. Denford is Dean of Social Sciences and Humanities and Professor of Management Information Systems at the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC). He holds a PhD in Management from Queen’s University and MBA and BEng (Engineering Management) and MBA degrees from RMC. James studies IT governance, knowledge management and digital innovation, all with a specific focus on the public sector, publishing his research in top journals in several fields. He sits on editorial boards and Association of Information Systems College and Special Interest Group executives.

Gregory S. Dawson

Gregory S. Dawson is a clinical professor in the School of Accountancy in the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. His research interests are in the areas of artificial intelligence, cognitive computing systems, IT governance and the public sector. He has published extensively in academic journals, including Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the Association of Information Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, as well as in practitioner outlets, including Brookings Institution and Information Week. His PhD is from the University of Georgia.

Kevin C. Desouza

Kevin C. Desouza is a Professor of Business, Technology and Strategy in the School of Management at the QUT Business School at the Queensland University of Technology. He is a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Governance Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. Desouza has authored, co-authored, and/or edited nine books. He has published more than 130 articles in journals across a range of disciplines including information systems, information science, public administration, political science, technology management, and urban affairs. Several outlets have featured his work including Sloan Management Review, Stanford Social Innovation Research, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Businessweek, Wired, Governing, Slate.com, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, NPR, PBS, and Computerworld. For more information, please visit http://www.kevindesouza.net

Aroon P. Manoharan

Aroon P. Manoharan, PhD is an Associate Professor and the Director of the National Center for Public Performance in the Sawyer Business School of Suffolk University Boston. His research interests include e-government, performance measurement, strategic planning, public communication, public management, administrative capacity, PA pedagogy, and comparative public administration. His recent publications include E-Government and Information Technology Management: Concepts and Best Practices, and E-Government and Websites: A Public Solutions Handbook. He is the Editor of the Occasional Paper Series of the Section on International and Comparative Administration (SICA). His recent research focuses on how e-government can enable the public sector to improve their communication strategies and promote citizen participation in government. He received his PhD from the School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA), Rutgers University-Newark.