Managing grand challenges: Extending the scope of problem structuring methods and behavioural operational research

Abstract

Addressing Grand Challenges (GC), such as navigating climate change or aging societies, is increasingly gaining prominence across the globe. Those researching and addressing such challenges argue that progress requires collaborative, integrated, and coordinated responses from a wide range of stakeholders including organisations, governments, communities, etc. To successfully navigate these challenges, approaches need to be able to engage with stakeholders in two ways. Firstly, in terms of eliciting a comprehensive understanding of the challenge as viewed through the many stakeholder lenses and thus managing the resultant complexity of that data and secondly through attending to the myriad socio-political considerations. Problem Structuring Methods (PSM) through their focus on managing messy, complex, wicked problems are well situated to assist in this endeavour, particularly when coupled with the growing body of work in the field of Behavioural OR (BOR). This paper illustrates how PSM with BOR can address Grand Challenges by mapping the characteristics together and proposing a framework depicting the potential contribution.