Review: Collaborative approaches to wicked problems
As a society, we are facing wild problems. Problems that are transnational and intractable and that are not easily defined or solved. These include labor shortages, mental health issues and climate change, to name but a few. These are problems that cannot be solved with traditional bureaucratic policy tools, but require new approaches.
If you consult the research on approaches to tackling wild problems, it points to collaboration as a fruitful way forward. However, there is currently no comprehensive overview of collaborative approaches, making it difficult for practitioners to learn from the research.
To provide an overview of research insights, this review takes a closer look at scientific articles on collaborative approaches to wild problems, i.e. articles that explore how wild problems can be tackled through collaboration managed in different ways.
Reviews of collaboration models show that research points to three dimensions of collaboration that are central to tackling wild problems: 1) Understanding the problem, 2) capacity and competence to handle the problem, and 3) organizing around the problem.