WICKED PROBLEMS, CLUMSY INSTITUTIONS AND

BRICOLAGE IN FHE and HFEWilliam Gourley

Suffolk

20 05 2008

FHE/HFE CHARACTERISED BY:-

• Multiple principal agent relations

• Ambiguous and sometimes conflicting goals

• Systemic and structured tensions

• Complexity and non linear causality

• Reconfigurations of sectors and interfaces

• Hybridisation and hybrid organisational forms

POLICY TRAJECTORIES NEED TO BE UNDERSTOOD AT:-

• System Level– Macro

• Field Level– Meso

• Inter-organisational transactions/exchanges– Micro

TRAJECTORIES AND FAULT LINES

• Structural contradictions and structural incoherence in HFE

• Operating across levels (macro, meso and micro)• Resolvable tensions or containable?• Are they manageable?• Institutions, forms and practices in HFE

– Shifting boundaries– Disjunctures of practice– Boundary crossing practices

• Complexity and diversity generating ‘wicked problems’

Wicked

• Not analytical

• Not Linear

• Complex policy problems

• Not easily solvable

• Work across internal and external boundaries

• Do we know what the problem is?

‘CLUMSY’ INSTITUTIONS

• Incorporate multiple voices, audiences and rhetorics

• Contested (constructive conflict / synergies)• Handle paradox, anomaly and contradiction• Are loosely coupled• Contradictory problem definitions and potential

compromises/settlements co-exist

POLICY DEFINITIONS AND ‘SOLUTIONS’ IN HFE

• HIERARCHISTS– Rational planning (centralisation one model fits all?)

• INDIVIDUALISTS – markets and competition (entrepreneurial orgs)

• ENCLAVES – Egalitarians (Disciplinary cultures, COP’s, COI’s,

consultation?)• FATALISTS

– Random or garbage can (passive FE advocacy in HE dominated field)

CLUMSY INSTITUTIONS AND POLICY

• Clumsy institutions incorporate structural incoherence/inconsistency

• Admit possibility of tacit as well as explicit and formal policy frames

• Four generic and modal forms of defining policy and organising (adapted from Hood, 2000)– Hierarchy (Oversight)– Individualist (Competition and markets)– Enclaves (Mutuality and reputation)– Fatalism (Contrived randomness

CLUMSY INSTITUTIONS

• Accommodate diverse audiences, voices and multiple interests – Hierarchy– Individualism– Enclaves– Fatalism

• Dual or Binary org forms as ‘solution’• Managing tensions and contradictions• Hybridisation

HFE: a wicked problem

• Tensions and contradictions not always resolvable

• Structured tension and contradictions operate at:– Macro, meso and micro levels

• Structural incoherence and coping strategies• Problem definition based on implicit meanings

and cultures• Tacit and unconscious• Multi-causal and complex iterations

DEFINING BRICOLAGE

• Creating structure out of events and materials at hand (contingent and ill structured or ‘wicked problems’)

• HFE as a ‘wicked problem’– Economic dimensions– Political dimensions (anticipatory

subordination)– Equity and fairness issues– Plausibility of claims

BRICOLAGE

Originally developed from work of Levi-Strauss

Ad hoc, situational and contextual

Associated with high policy uncertainty and ambiguity

Response to rapid and inconsistent policy shifts

An aspect of structural incoherence

BRICOLAGE AND ILL STRUCTURED PROBLEMS

• “Wicked problems”:- no predetermined solution

• Problems:- – widening participation to non traditional

groups (but now they are traditional)– Which organisational forms best achieve this

(Binary or duals or MEG’s reconfigured)– Transitions and boundaries (students,

sectors, organisations, disciplinary cultures, interest groups and coalitions/alliances)

BRICOLAGE

• Pre Incorporation 1987– Clear binary divide between HE and FE

• Transition 1988-1992– Incorporation

• ‘Low policy 1993 -1996– Franchising

• Shift to ‘High Policy’ 1997 -2001– Dearing and co-opetition

• Structured collaboration 2001 – date– Reconfigured HFE field

BRICOLAGE AND BOUNDARY CROSSING

• Bricolage and boundary crossing

• Needs organisational slack and degrees of redundancy

• Switching institutional and organisational logics (dual or plural authority structures resource streams)

• Bricolage as context (Grid-group transitions)

WICKED PROBLEMS

• Intended and uninteded consequences• Anticipatory subordination (Brint and

Karabel, 1989)• Plausible claims and sustainable practices• Quality versus retention• Autonomy versus dependence• Governance and academic freedom• Contradictory structural locations

WICKED PROBLEMS

• Effective and embedded boundary objects

• Accountability and transaction costs

• Contradictory colleges (Dougherty, 2001)

• Diverted Dreams (Brint and Karabel, 1989)

• No one solution or do we know what the problem is? (Rittel and Webber, 1973)

CLUMSY INSTITUTIONS

• Binary or dual

• Hybridisation

• Diversity and differentiation (positional goods)

• System interfaces and boundaries (horizontal and vertical boundaries)

• Coping with structural incoherence

BRICOLAGE

• From bricolage to structured collaboration

• Whatever happened to competition?

• Co-opetition

• New structures and management styles

• Legitimacy– HFE ‘moral entrepreneurs’

POSITIONING AND RECONFIGURATION

• Monster barring (sectors, interfaces and policy histories)

• Segregation and denial

• Integration and assimilation

• Colonisation (FE or FE model)

• Hybridisation or Creolisation

• Cores, margins or periphery

References

• Brint S and Karabel J (1989) The Diverted Dream: Community Colleges and the Promise of Educational Opportunity in America, 1900–1985.

• Dougherty K J (2001) The Contradictory College. The Conflicting Origins, Impacts, and Futures of the Community College.

• Hood C (2000) The Art of the State.• Rittel H W J and Webber M M (1973) Dilemas in

a General Theory of Planning.