Wicked problems’ are persistent challenges that defy resolution, generally seen as complex and open-ended (Rittel & Webber, 1973).Unlike “tame” problems with ready-made or tested solutions, wicked problems lack clarity in their definition and their solutions are often strongly contested, risky, and subject to many real-world constraints.Examples include extreme poverty, pandemics, nuclear proliferation, climate refugees, and terrorism. Most of the world’s crises highlighted in the Sustainable Development Goals are wicked problems.
This is a Radford University faculty-student collaboration project in
partnership with the United Nations Principles of Responsible
Management Education (UN PRiME) network to develop a Wicked ProblemsToolkit.
It aims to research and evaluate solutions to wicked problems and create a ‘global commons’ repository (called the ‘Toolkit’) of open educational resources on solving some intractable global problems. The educational resources include case studies, syllabi, teaching exercises, journal articles, and student research outputs. They are meant to be used by educators around the world in their teaching and research on topics related to wicked problems, such as pandemics, vaccine equity, armed conflict, climate refugees, hate crimes, violent extremism, and the mass extinction of species. The team of a dedicated students and faculty
member has been working on this project since December 1, 2022. They
have formed a new student organization, called the
Wicked Society to organize themselves and sustain their work in
researching the causes and consequences of wicked problems and the
search for solutions to them.
Click below for a link to the 10th Responsible Management Education Research Conference in Lisbon in September 2023 where Radford students will present their work on wicked proglems.
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