What is the Nature of Wicked Problems in Public Administration?

New Public Management (NPM) emerged during the 1990s, with an aim to bring private sector practices to improve public administration. Recently, CSR and foundations have increased this cross-fertilization.

But this transition is not always smooth! One reason is that problems in public administration are wicked – a term used by Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber in their classic article “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning”.

COVID-19 was a wicked problem. Let us use this example to understand the nature of wicked problems.

Characteristic #1: Definition and action are linked

One’s definition of COVID dictates the actions to tackle it. Enforcing stay-at-home orders is the primary action if the aim is to reduce the number of cases (flatten the curve). This option is exercised if a vaccine/cure is expected soon. The well-known public health model of testing, tracking, isolating, and quarantining is relied on if the pandemic is expected to be around for a longer time. A mix of the two is also used if the pandemic is ill-defined and there are many unknowns.

Characteristic #2: Wicked problems have no stopping rule

In arithmetic, one stops when they reach a solution to an equation (e.g. 2+2=4). In COVID, one does not know when to stop testing in different areas, how long to enforce lockdowns and with what intensity, or the number of beds to be made ready. In the absence of stopping rules, field workers stop or pause when they run out of time, money, or patience, finally saying, “That's good enough" or “This is the best I can do within the limitations”.

Characteristic #3: Solutions are not true-or-false, but good-or-bad

Conventionally, the chemical formula of a compound is either correct or false. COVID-control operations are assessed as true or false, not good or bad. Some nations followed the strategy of achieving “herd immunity” and did not quickly ramp up testing. A study in Spain showed that only about 5% of the affected population had developed antibodies, and there was large chance of collateral damage to other parts of the body due to infection. In hindsight, this strategy would be judged as “bad” (not false).

Characteristic #4: There is no immediate/ultimate test of a solution

Solutions to wicked problems generate waves of consequences, which may appear in the long run. One example is the effect of pandemics on the political economy. The 14th century plague killed a large part of the workforce. This led to higher wages for surviving peasants. In the long run, the plague was one of the major factors responsible for the coming apart of serfdom and the feudal system. Similarly, the future effects of COVID-19 on societal affairs are hard to know right away.

Every solution to a wicked problem is a “one-shot operation”, because there is no opportunity of trial-and-error, every attempt counts substantially. In physics, experiments can be repeated again and again in laboratories without any negative effects on the discipline of physics or on society. With wicked problems, every intervention matters. For example, if you are testing the efficacy of putting on masks then during the trial-and-error period some people would contract COVID and infect others. During the experimental period, the disease would have spread irreversibly and tracking the source of infections would become undoable.

Characteristic #5: Every wicked problem is essentially unique

Pandemics have been around as long as human beings. Some of the recent most well-known include: the Spanish flu (1918), Asian influenza (1957), and Hong Kong flu (1968). Even though they have some commonalities, each of them is “essentially unique”. In other words, despite several similarities between COVID-19 and the earlier varieties of influenza, one cannot be sure that some features of new pandemics would not override its commonalities as compared to influenzas dealt with in the past.

Characteristic #6: Practitioner (and civil servant) has no right to be wrong

The purpose of COVID-control interventions is not to find the truth, but to save the lives of people. As the actions of people involved in COVID-control operations touch the lives of people, they cannot afford to go wrong. For example, during the initial stages of outbreak of COVID-19, ventilators were seen as a cure-all for patients. Later, an Italian doctor, Luciano Gattinoni, found that COVID-19 patients even with low blood-oxygen levels were not having difficulty in breathing. Moreover, the mortality rate of patients on ventilator support was more than 80%. Thus, excessive reliance of ventilators in the early stages of the outbreak was avoidable.

Public administrators deal with wicked problems that are messy and complex and neutral, where absolute objective solutions are unavailable. The Americans call this the funk of life. Often, an elusive political judgement is required to resolve (not solve) wicked problems. This is the major take-away for administrators as well as managers and executives coming from corporates, non-profit organizations, foundations, voluntary groups, social enterprises and cooperatives.