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In this chapter, the author delves deeper into adaptive and sustainability challenges, specifically discussing the roles of management and leadership in addressing these problems. Both responsible leadership and management are essential for tackling sustainability challenges. Leadership focuses on establishing a vision and inspiring others to attain it, while management is concerned with devising and executing strategies to realize that vision. Addressing wicked problems necessitates collaboration, engagement and innovative solutions, involving both leadership and management. To effectively conquer sustainability challenges, organizations must embrace a more holistic and sustainable approach to management and leadership. This might include collaborating with stakeholders to discover innovative solutions that prioritize sustainability and social responsibility. Resolving wicked problems calls for a distinct management and leadership approach that is cooperative, systemic, and sustainable.

Wicked problems are causally complex, lack definite solutions, and re-emerge in different guises. This paper discusses how new ways of organizing emerge to tackle changing manifestations of wicked problems. Focusing on the wicked problem of poverty, we conducted a longitudinal study of Fe y Alegria (FyA), one of the world’s largest non-governmental organization, which provides education for the poor across 21 countries in Latin America and Africa. Drawing on archival and ethnographic data, we trace the historical narratives of how FyA defined poverty as a problem and developed new ways of organizing, from its foundation by a Jesuit priest in 1955 to its current networked structure. Our findings reveal the ongoing cycle of interpretive problem definition and organizing solutions for wicked problems. First, since there is no “true” formulation of a wicked problem, actors construct narrative explanations based on their understanding of the problem. Second, organizational solutions to a wicked problem are thus reflections of these narrative constructions. Third, emerging and changing narratives about what the problem is inspire new organizational responses. Our findings provide insights into the dynamic relationship between organizing for wicked problems, narratives, and the changing manifestations of wicked problems and grand challenges more broadly.

We revisit the problem of redesigning the Master in Business Administration (MBA) program, curriculum, and pedagogy, focusing on understanding and seeking to tame its “wicked problems,” as an intrinsic part and challenge of the MBA program venture, and to render it more realistic and relevant to address major problems and their consequences. We briefly review the theory of wicked problems and methods of dealing with their consequences from multiple perspectives. Most characterization of problems classifies them as simple (problems that have known formulations and solutions), complex (where formulations are known but not their resolutions), unstructured problems (where formulations are unknown, but solutions are estimated), and “wicked” (where both problem formulations and their resolutions are unknown but eventually partially tamable). Uncertainty, unpredictability, randomness, and ambiguity increase from simple to complex to unstructured to wicked problems. A redesigned MBA program should therefore address them effectively through the four semesters in two years. Most of these problems are real and affect life and economies, and hence, business schools cannot but incorporate them into their critical, ethical, and moral thinking.

The paper frames modern slavery as a global wicked problem and aims to provide a set of international business (IB) policy recommendations for taming it. The outlined approach can also guide IB policymaking to address other kinds of wicked problems.

This is a conceptual paper that reviews existing literature on wicked problems and integrates it with an IB policy double helix framework. The paper focuseses on the role multinational enterprises (MNEs) play in moderl slavery globally, either through global value chains or within global factory modes of operation.

As a global wicked problem, modern slavery will never be solved, but it can be re-solved time and time over. Understanding the social reproduction of modern slavery can help shift the focus from labor governance and a narrow supply chain focus toward the role of transnational governance and the need to address institutional, market and organizational failures.

The paper contributes to the gap in an overarching theory of modern slavery and systematically applies the concept of wicked problems and wickedness theory to modern slavery. Drawing on an IB policy double helix framework, the paper addresses the governance nexus between modern slavery, IB and policymaking which can in turn advance IB policy research and theory.

In this interview John C Camillus, author of Wicked Strategies: How Companies Conquer Complexity and Confound Competitors shares his approach to identifying “wicked problems” that firms can then explore to find growth opportunities.

The “wicked strategies” approach that Camillus proposes is designed to convert disruptive technologies into innovative business models, reconcile conflicted stakeholders by engaging them in co-creation of value and transform an unknowable future into a desired one through the alchemy of a Feed-Forward Framework.

Camillus’ proposed Feed-Forward Framework enables and employs the process of experimentation.

Camillus’ multi-level approach starts by discerning unique “wicked problems,” then applies a “Feed-Forward Framework” that analyzes multiple stakeholder interests and develops scenarios to discover and test possible opportunities and robust strategies.

The role of the corporate headquarters that Camillus proposes differs from the approach that is conventionally employed – it focuses intensely on human resources and competency development.

The purpose of this paper is to critique the existing decision-making models of organizational theory and the ability of strategic managers to address unconventional problems using these models. Strategic management models presume reasonable stability in the task environment and the organizational design features. However, complex problems, or wicked problems, are prolific in a global world. They change profoundly the nature of strategic management, where management faces a deep paradox – an environment of unprecedented interdependence, yet unpredictable forces of chaos and volatility, a landscape of wicked problems. In this paper, the authors address wicked problems within the context of strategic management.

The authors review and critique the organizational theory literature, namely, microeconomics, bounded rationality, organizational failure and the theory of creative destruction within the context of wicked problems.

The authors find that the contemporary models of strategic management are incapable of assisting managers in addressing the reality of wicked problems. They argue that organizational pathologies rest in executive action: pursuit of goals and objectives with a false sense of causation, feedback filters that exaggerate good news and restrict bad news and actions that give only token measures to correct faulty design decisions and faulty decision processes, including more emphasis on vertical channels than horizontal task interdependencies.

The authors conclude that wicked problem-solving is by temperament and time horizon, a multilayered, multitasked, organizational challenge, and requires fundamentally different mindsets for design and performance systems for senior executives. The study of wicked problems requires a new corporate mindset, new collaborative models to address them and new corporate processes and executive training tools who increasingly have to address them. This research is a first step toward extending our understanding of how to address the world of wicked problems.

This paper examines the relevance of the wicked problem continuum, particularly the emergence of super wicked challenges for public leadership researchers. Contemporary theorizing on public leadership adequately deals with tame challenges, struggles with wicked problems and remains in the dark with regards to the implications of super wicked problems

The wicked problem continuum provides a typology or set of dilemmas running from tame to wicked through to super wicked problems. These different problem types are treated as if they were on a three-zone continuum in which the difficulty of solving or substantially reducing the problem varies from relatively low to very high.

We delineate the three-problem contexts in the wicked problem continuum and discuss the ideal type of organization thriving in each zone. We then posit two opposing wicked problem interpretations-taming and wilding- for those interested in public leadership. Taming calls for prudent, results-oriented leaders employing tried and tested practices. Wilding demands leaders who test the status quo by seeking alternatives.

On the global leadership agenda, wilding problems—those calling attention to the super wicked zone—are escalating. Despite this, public leaders' training lacks a framework for making sense of these urgent and publicly contentious super wicked problems.

Public policy researchers are beginning to direct attention to super wicked problems such as climate change, and pandemics. This work introduces the wicked problem continuum and demonstrates its pertinence for researchers of public leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relevance for sociologically minded planners and policy analysts of the neglected moral dimension of wicked problems.

A review of the literature on the wicked‐tame problem distinction reveals three critical deficiencies: a fixed focus on dynamic complexity; a neglect of the applied knowledge market and the assumption that wicked problems, in time, are tamable. These deficiencies, in light of the call to dialogue and participation in working through wicked problems, result in four interrelated normative problems.

These normative problems are the: responsibility nexus; risk of false assurance; politics of urgency; and claim to be on the knowledge frontier.

Addressing these normative problems in working with wicked problems requires less marketing of the silver bullet elements of the solution and more attention to that portion of the wicked problem which still requires attention.

This is the first work to return to Churchman's call to policy analysts, planners and designers to take the moral dimensions of wicked problems in hand when working with intractable network‐based problems requiring ongoing client/user participation.

This paper aims to use systems thinking, systems theory and Camillus’ framework for responding to wicked problems to provide social marketers with a theoretically based framework for approaching strategy formation for wicked problems. The paper treats fast fashion as an illustrative case and takes a step back from implementation to provide a framework for analysing and gaining understanding of wicked problem system structure for social marketers to then plan more effective interventions. The proposed approach is intended as a theory-based tool for social marketing practitioners to uncover system structure and analyse the wicked problems they face.

Following Layton, this work provides theoretically based guidelines for analysing the black box of how to develop and refine strategy as first proposed in Camillus’ (2008) framework for responding to wicked issues.

The prescription thus developed for approaching wicked problems’ system structure revolves around identifying the individuals, groups or entities that make up the system involved in the wicked problem, and then determining which social mechanisms most clearly drive each entity and which outcomes motivate these social mechanisms, before determining which role the entities play as either incumbent, challenger or governance and which social narratives drive each role’s participation in the wicked problem.

This paper shows that using systems thinking can help social marketers to gain big picture thinking and develop strategy for responding to complex issues, while considering the consequences of interventions.

The purpose of this paper is to extend and elaborate the notion of successful organizational change to incorporate the concept of large system change (LSC), by developing a framework that brings together complexity and wicked problems theories to understand how individual organizations and change agents can better influence LSC.

This conceptual paper integrates wicked problems and complexity theories to understand and cope with large system initiatives from the perspective of change agents in organizations, and uses the case of the electricity system as an illustrative example for these concepts.

The paper provides implications for LSC and action steps for change agents in organizations, arguing that by understanding change initiatives through the lenses of complexity and wicked problems, change agents are likely to be more effective.

The integration of complexity science and wicked problems underpins the development of a comprehensive framework for creating effective LSC solutions, however, these ideas still need to be grounded in practice and empirical research.

Using these ideas, change agents in organizations can enhance their influence and use the power of system dynamics to support positive action for sustainable change. This paper provides a foundation to help think through the cross-sectoral, inter-organizational, and change dynamics involved in LSC efforts needed to bring about a more sustainable, secure, and equitable world for all.

The world greatly needs system change; however, there is limited theory on effective LSC. This paper hopes to contribute to understanding the ways in which the difficulties of such change can be harnessed to move in positive directions with minimal disruption and greatest effectiveness.

Theories of change management that position the organization in the context of a broader system and define its role in creating change do not yet articulate the nature of the problems at hand in relation to the large systems where they are embedded. This paper builds upon wicked problems and complexity theories to shed light on the role of change agents and organizations in effective transformational change.