Enabling Political Legitimacy and Conceptual Integration for Climate Change Adaptation Research within an Agricultural Bureaucracy: a Systemic Inquiry

Andrea Grant (), Ray Ison, Robert Faggian and Victor Sposito
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Andrea Grant: Scion, Forestry Research Institute
Ray Ison: The Open University
Robert Faggian: Deakin University
Victor Sposito: Deakin University

Systemic Practice and Action Research, 2019, vol. 32, issue 5, No 5, 573-600

Abstract: Abstract The value of using systems approaches, for situations framed as ‘super wicked’, is examined from the perspective of research managers and stakeholders in a state-based climate change adaptation (CCA) program (CliChAP). Polycentric drivers influencing the development of CCA research pre-2010 in Victoria, Australia are reflected on, using Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) to generate a boundary critique of CCA research as a human activity system. We experienced the complexity of purpose with research practices pulling in different directions, reflected on the appropriateness of agricultural bureaucracies’ historical new public management (NPM) practices, and focused on realigning management theory with emerging demands for adaptation research skills and capability. Our analysis conceptualised CliChAP as a subsystem, generating novelty in a wider system, concerned with socio-ecological co-evolution. Constraining/enabling conditions at the time dealing with political legitimacy and conceptual integration were observed as potential catalysts for innovation in research management towards better handling of uncertainty as a social process using systemic thinking in practice (StiP).

Keywords: Wicked problems; Research management; Boundary critique; Science-policy practice; Socio-ecological co-evolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1007/s11213-018-9474-7

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