Problem Solving and Institutional Design

Powerful Owners and Powerful Legacies. What Drives Change in the World Rally Championship?

“…Expanding from new institutional theory, which emphasizes how organizations change resulting from external pressure, institutional logic looks inwards to organizations and points to how change is resisted or enabled (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008). Generally, organizations are thus the cumulative consequences of the actions of many people over time (Chisholm, 1995), where 'the formal structure must itself be seen as an adaptive product, responsive to environmental influences, including cultural definitions of propriety and legitimacy' (Selznick, 1996, p. 273).…”

Pathways to collaborative implementation: problems, decisions, persistence, progress, and consensus in collaborative implementation, studied through projects for integrated water resources management in Colombia

“…A vast body of research emerged about the role of argumentation in policy analysis (Fischer & Forester, 1993;Majone, 1989), the role of discourse in the policy process (Hajer, 1993), as well as on methods to identify and overcame differences in problem definitions (Hisschemöller & Hoppe, 1995;Roe, 1994). It was also accepted that those problem definitions were really problem representations (Chisholm, 1995). The framing and reframing of policies and policy debates using frames and narratives as conceptual tools have become a priority for both researchers and policy actors (Borins, 2011;Hoppe, 2010;Lejano et al, 2013;Shanahan et al, 2013;van Hulst & Yanow, 2016;Veselková, 2017).…”

“…The discussion of ideas in May and Jochim (2013), which includes the importance of shared commitments and understandings, is a refreshing deviation from the implementation research mainstream. Within this, concepts like frames (Rein & Schon, 1996;Schon & Rein, 1994), narratives (Roe, 1989;Roe, 1994) problem structures (Hoppe, 2011), problem representations (Chisholm, 1995) and ways of knowing (Schneider & Ingram, 2007) that are used to understand intractable policy controversies (Schon & Rein, 1994) have been largely absent from the analyses. This is in a way consistent with the conceptualization of implementation as action, activities, or behavior, and not as new moments of decision-making (for some exceptions to this majoritarian approach see Chapter 1).…”

“…A narrow mandate is helpful when higher-level decisions must be communicated. However, it will likely be inadequate when it does not match the problem space created by the diverse problem representations (Chisholm, 1995) of different decisionsharing actors. It is not the mandate, but that problem space, that makes problems well or ill-structured (Simon, 1973).…”

If wildlife enforcement monitoring system (WEMS) is the solution, what is the problem?

“…Addressing the invisible factors requires them to be brought above the surface of the sea. The diagram is a modified version of the model proposed by Chisholm (1995).…”