No End in Sight.The wickedness of global displacement or how refugee crises are enacted over time.

Abstract

This study examines how organizations may enact wicked problems over time. While research interested in wicked problems and grand challenges so far mainly explored how organizations respond to global social problems, less attention has been given to how such wicked problems are constituted over time as organisations respond to them. Drawing on Weick’s concept of ‘Enacting as Intensifying’, and relying on a longitudinal ethnographic case study of a humanitarian crisis in Rwanda, we disclose practices of intensification that turn refugee camps into dangerous social hotspots, and shed light on alternative practices such as online cash assistance that de- intensify the crisis. We conceptualize these dynamics of intensifying wicked problems as spatial and temporal containment, and refer to processes of de- intensification as temporal and spatial diffusion. In doing so, we first contribute to the literature on wicked problems and grand challenges by specifying the underlying dynamics of such problem’s chronic persistence. Second, we extend the enactment perspective to large-scale crises situations and emphasize the role of trait-making organizations in re-enacting global wicked problems over time.