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– The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of how university students address learning through playing wicked games.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of how university students address learning through playing wicked games.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a case study run by the author of a university undergraduate education module, qualitative data are provided to support a pragmatic model of addressing the issues of realistic behavior and outcomes.
Findings
Through a combination of elements – mainly, integration of more conventional academic research, use of repeated points of contact between students and the lecturer and extensive reflection after the activity by the student – it is possible to provide for a gameplay experience that more closely follows real-world outcomes than would otherwise occur.
Research limitations/implications
The use of a single case study clearly limits the ability to generalize and implies the need to replicate the work in new iterations and in new contexts.
Practical implications
The paper highlights the importance of grounding wicked gameplay in reality, if they are to maximize their utility as a teaching practice. It also stresses the high level of engagement, not only on the part of the students but also on the part of the lecturer, who must be an active part of the gameplay structure.
Originality/value
The consideration of a continuous process of grounding wicked games in reality is one that has not been explored by the existing literature, so it offers useful insights into practice that will be of value to both practitioners and theorists in the field.
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Paul Langley and Alison Rieple
This empirical study uncovers emotional sensemaking factors that cause changes in management perceptions about wicked strategic problems under dynamic complexity. These perception…
Abstract
Purpose
This empirical study uncovers emotional sensemaking factors that cause changes in management perceptions about wicked strategic problems under dynamic complexity. These perception changes improve understanding of, and solutions to, the wicked problem.
Design/methodology/approach
Senior managers from three large organizations in different sectors participated in gaming simulation workshops. The strategic issues at stake were intractable and divisive. Qualitative methods captured participants' perceptions of the problems and the dynamic complexity that they faced and how they changed.
Findings
Flawed management perceptions were revised as sensemaking processes were catalyzed by emotions of shock/surprise that came from experiencing unexpected stakeholder conduct within a simulation. The plausibility of the conduct was strengthened because managers were role-playing stakeholders. The shock/surprise emotion uncoupled attachment to entrenched beliefs, leading to a willingness to revise the flawed perceptions. The changed perceptions created new insights for a solution to the wicked problem.
Practical implications
Practical implications are how management practitioners can improve the tackling of wicked strategic problems through the use of shock and surprise in a gaming simulation.
Originality/value
This research extends theory on the role of emotions in sensemaking under dynamic complexity. The authors uncover how a hierarchy of managers' emotions used in sensemaking explains the catalytic effect of the shock and surprise of unexpected stakeholder conduct on revisions to their perceptions of the outcomes of the dynamic complexity.
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To study how twenty-first-century fairy tale retellings recombine villainy and motherhood, this chapter analyses two mother figures in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019)…
Abstract
To study how twenty-first-century fairy tale retellings recombine villainy and motherhood, this chapter analyses two mother figures in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019): Aurora's godmother, Maleficent, and Aurora's soon-to-be mother-in-law, Queen Ingrith. I argue that Mistress of Evil attempts and fails to trouble the Good/Terrible Mother binary, ultimately reconfirming traditional notions of the Good Mother, by juxtaposing two mother villain characters. Ingrith first appears to be the epitome of the Good Mother, but the film quickly reveals that she is actually the stereotypical evil mother-in-law who uses the Good Mother image to mask her villainy. By exposing Ingrith's lie, the film debases the myth of perfect motherhood, suggesting that the image of the ‘Good Mother’ is only used to vilify other women in order to control people, but it also uses the Good Mother image to highlight how Terrible Ingrith is. Maleficent, on the other hand, vacillates between twenty-first-century images of the Terrible and Good Mother, specifically the aberrant and supermother. Rather than balancing these images and depicting a more nuanced motherhood, the film switches Maleficent completely between these two extremes, making her seem more villainous when she is aberrant and more motherly when she steps into the role of supermother. Whereas the representation of Ingrith highlights the lie of the Good Mother, Maleficent is forced into becoming a variation of that image. I argue that while Mistress of Evil attempts to reveal the pernicious nature of the Good Mother myth, it ultimately reconfirms it for a new generation of women.
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This chapter argues that Maleficent's physical difference and social exclusion can be analysed as disabling rather than villainous trajectories in Maleficent (2014) and…
Abstract
This chapter argues that Maleficent's physical difference and social exclusion can be analysed as disabling rather than villainous trajectories in Maleficent (2014) and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019). I explore how Maleficent is (re)represented in the twenty-first century as a more sympathetic figure who contends with disability and social prejudice in her attempt to form meaningful connections with others. I analyse Maleficent's ‘villainous’ traits using Feminist Disability Studies (Garland-Thomson, 1997, 2017; Wendell, 1989) to argue that her physical and cultural differences invite hostility from the human kingdom, especially in relation to her maternal connection with Aurora. While critics have examined themes of disability and motherhood in Maleficent (Donnelly, 2016; Wehler, 2019), I argue that these narratives are continued and subverted further in the sequel Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019). In re-visioning Maleficent in this way, it becomes possible to challenge narratives of female villainy by paying attention to physical disability, social exclusion and maternal love.
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Kieran James, Chris Tolliday and Rex Walsh
The purpose of this paper is to review the cancellation of Australia's National Soccer League (NSL) competition and its replacement in 2004 with the corporatist A‐League which is…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review the cancellation of Australia's National Soccer League (NSL) competition and its replacement in 2004 with the corporatist A‐League which is based on the North American model of “one team one city”, no promotion and relegation, and private‐equity clubs. The authors believe that one of the aims of the A‐League and its “ground‐zero” ideology was to institute exclusion of the ethnic clubs that had formed the backbone of the NSL for 30 years.
Design/methodology/approach
Extensive literature search, participant‐observation, one personal interview and two group interviews were employed. People interviewed were the President of the Croatian community's Melbourne Knights Football Club, the Club Secretary of Melbourne Knights, and three leaders of Melbourne Knights’ MCF hooligan firm.
Findings
The authors observe the Football Federation Australia hiding behind the perceived scientific nature and technical veracity of budgeted accounting numbers to set the financial bar too high for the ethnic clubs to find a place in the brave new world that has been called “Modern Football”. However, capitalism creates its own discontents. Online forums and homemade fence banners are the new vehicles for dissent for the supporters of “Old Soccer”.
Originality/value
There is still only a small academic literature on Australian football and most of this has been written by humanities lecturers. The paper offers a business school perspective.
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This paper aims to present “Bouncecasting,” a seminar gaming foresight approach useful for examining “wicked problems” where the path to the future is uncertain and malleable and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present “Bouncecasting,” a seminar gaming foresight approach useful for examining “wicked problems” where the path to the future is uncertain and malleable and where major stakeholders may have different preferences for different futures. The approach gets its name because it goes back and forth between forecasting and backcasting, provides for give and take among different groups of stakeholders and creates and compares multiple scenarios depicting plausible futures.
Design/methodology/approach
After defining Bouncecasting, presenting its main features and providing a recommended way of conducting Bouncecasting studies, the approach is illustrated by four Bouncecasting projects conducted between 1998 and 2004.
Findings
The four projects taken together show that Bouncecasting can be used to address a range of wicked problems in a practical way. The projects considered in sequence show the evolution of the method.
Originality/value
Bouncecasting is a way of doing foresight that examines in an integrated way multiple characteristics of a policy problem, thereby providing promising solutions for complex issues. Although there have been over a dozen Bouncecasting studies conducted by the author and different sets of colleagues, this is the first general description of the approach.
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The purpose of the paper is to design and explain a moral compass framework that informs decision-making by those engaged in shaping the doctoral education and supervision…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to design and explain a moral compass framework that informs decision-making by those engaged in shaping the doctoral education and supervision environment.
Design/methodology/approach
The research involved analysis of transcripts of 50 interviews with a range of doctoral students and supervisors. The framework was derived from the integration of the transcript analysis with a range of theoretical constructs: Rittel and Webber’s (1973) “wicked” problems; Bowden’s (2004) capability for the unknown future; Baillie et al.’s (2013) threshold capability development; liminality (Meyer and Land 2006); mindfulness (Langer and Moldoveanu, 2000; Green and Bowden, 2012); as well as our interpretation of moral compass and collective morality.
Findings
Although applicable to a wide range of contexts, with broader, potentially universal implications for professional life, the framework is explained using the doctoral education system as example, and supervisor and candidate experiences as illustration. It relates individual decision-making to notions of collective morality and moral development within a multi-level system, through moral advocacy and moral mediation, activities identified as necessary at all levels of the doctoral system.
Originality/value
Our framework demonstrates the need for developing awareness of the multi-factorial nature of the wicked problems that arise in doctoral education and the requirement to address such problems across all levels – individual, organisational and national. We identified the central importance of a new construct – collective morality and the way that moral advocacy and moral mediation can contribute to resolution of such wicked problems in doctoral education and supervision.
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This is a response to “Taming wicked problems”, a paper recently published in CPOIB in which modern slavery is framed as a wicked problem. The purpose of this study is to convey…
Abstract
Purpose
This is a response to “Taming wicked problems”, a paper recently published in CPOIB in which modern slavery is framed as a wicked problem. The purpose of this study is to convey the author’s appraisal of its contribution to policymaking regarding modern slavery in global supply chains.
Design/methodology/approach
The author engages in a discursive review of “Taming wicked problems”, taking inspiration from its perceived strengths and weaknesses to expand on the problem of modern slavery as a challenge to international business (IB) researchers.
Findings
“Taming wicked problems” is welcomed as a provocative contribution to modern slavery research in IB, although it is perceived to give too little critical attention to the problem of modern slavery itself.
Research limitations/implications
This is, by design, a subjective assessment of the treatment of modern slavery and policy from the perspective of an IB researcher who has previously studied the phenomenon without a wicked problem framing.
Practical implications
Modern slavery is a serious problem for IB scholars, as they have failed to extrapolate it from their analysis of international business strategy. This paper is intended to advance the disciplinary defence of vulnerable workers exploited to the ultimate benefit of MNEs.
Social implications
IB must engage critically with international business strategies that heighten the risk of human rights violations. The persistence of modern slavery disadvantages all persons in employment.
Originality/value
This paper seeks to better define the offense implicit in modern slavery so to inform critical IB research into its causes and deterrence.
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Abstract
Details
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Camilo Arciniegas Pradilla, Jose Bento da Silva and Juliane Reinecke
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…
Abstract
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.
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