figshare.utas.edu.au
Better managing social-ecological systems to address wicked problems : a new complex relational systems-thinking approach
Left unresolved, current wicked environmental problems like climate change, resource depletion, pollution and biodiversity loss will exacerbate and create social inequalities and vulnerabilities around the globe. For this reason, the challenge of sustainability is one of understanding and managing linked social-ecological systems. These are systems in which economic, political and cultural processes are inseparable from planetary realities. To better plan for and manage wicked problems, better understanding of complexities in dynamic relationships across scales is needed. I provide new theoretical insights into organising relationships within and between ever-changing social-ecological systems, outcomes and contexts. The novel complex relational systems-thinking approach presented is shown to be relevant to the practical challenge of sustainably managing social-ecological systems to enhance resilience and equity. Chapters 2 through 5 are published.Chapter 1 introduces the history of key concepts used in the thesis, including sustainability, wicked problems, systems-thinking, complexity, resilience, relationality, organisation and control-support political dynamics. Reviewing existing relational multiscalar and multi-level system-thinking models, Chapter 1 identifies a lack of complex relational systems-thinking approaches that build sustainability competence in managing complex relationships in social-ecological systems as the research gap addressed by the thesis. My complex relational systems-thinking is then positioned as part an emerging 5th wave of systems-thinking.Chapter 2 outlines a relational approach to building sustainability competencies. I argue that systems-thinking is a meta-competence that interrelates with all other sustainability competencies. The chapter identifies how this meta-competence can improve management of wicked problems through a more conscious, comprehensive, and complex relational approach to self-organising and sociocultural organising dynamics. Self-organising social-ecological systems rely on structured relationships within them to ensure their sustainability, while sociocultural organising social-ecological systems rely on structured relationships between them for their sustainability. Two axes of sustainable practice are used to examine the conceptual approach: the axis of local to global and the axis of incremental reform to radical transformation. A post-publication Addendum describes complex adaptive systems and complexity thinking concepts and connects them to addressing the wicked problem of domestic violence through a complex relational systems-thinking lens.In Chapter 3, I propose a complex relational systems-thinking theoretical model of organising dynamics in economic systems. Economic systems respond to wicked social-ecological problems through producing, consuming and distributing relatively scarce goods and services. The model identifies within and between relationships in four basic elements of economic systems: structures, processes, functions, and contents. Structures are theorised as free-market, centrally planned or mixed economies. Processes are theorised as acts of production and acts of consumption. Functions are theorised as local to global trading of goods and services. Intangible contents are theorised as economic data and knowledge, such as the measure of gross domestic product (GDP) or the conceptual relation of supply and demand. These elements intra-act and interact across local, subnational and international economic scales. Building on Chapter 1, the chapter develops political concepts of self and sociocultural control and self and sociocultural support to explain how economic systems are managed. A post-publication Addendum elaborates examples of control and support dynamics, identifies leverage points as places of effective intervention, and discusses if radical transformation is possible in the capitalist institutional framework in economic systems.Chapter 4 demonstrates the utility of the complex relational systems-thinking conceptual approach introduced in Chapters 2 and 3 through a case study of a wicked environmental problem in the form of the disaster management responses to unprecedented floods in the Northern Rivers Region, New South Wales, Australia in 2022. Ostrom’s social-ecological systems framework, comprising settings, systems, resource units, change agents, sociotechnical relationships, and outcomes, is used to identify the factors involved in managing the floods. My model is then applied to assess each factor, revealing a systemic lack of systems-thinking meta-competence. Poor collaborative capacity, vulnerabilities in environmental management, and deficient governance systems are identified as key effects of this lack of systems-thinking competence. To support better future outcomes, sustainability indicators for social-ecological systems are provided for social, environmental, and economic domains across each management factor. To demonstrate the practical utility of the analysis, a disaster policy brief, plan for action, and barriers to managing future floods is presented in a post-publication Addendum.Chapter 5 applies the complex relational systems-thinking model to the wicked problem of managing the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia. While the floods case study analysis in Chapter 4 is relatively discrete and post-hoc, in Chapter 5 COVID-19 is approached as a natural experiment playing out over space and time. Proxies were used for measuring the resilience of democratic systems, the resilience of economic systems, the relative income inequality nationally over time, and the relative mortality rates of age cohorts from COVID-19. The resulting four data sets are used to demonstrate the explanatory power of my model. First, public opinion in democratic forums shifted from favouring societal transformation to favouring incremental adaptation in COVID-19. Second, weekly payroll jobs were more ‘resilient’ in regional than urban areas due to different population densities, and more resilient at national than state scale due to the higher concentration of, and exposure to, the virus in NSW and Victoria in contrast to other states. Third, income inequality fell during the pandemic under a conservative federal government. Fourth, mortality rates were minimised through pandemic eras/policies of restrictions and vaccination. These findings indicate the potential of my model in assessing systems resilience and outcome fairness in practice and in building systems-thinking sustainability competence in management. A post-publication Addendum addresses methodological issues of the analysis and establishes its relevance as part of an emerging fifth wave of systems-thinking.In Chapter 6, I conclude by integrating insights provided by the complex relational systems-thinking conceptual and practical approach presented for enhancing the better managing of wicked problems in complex socio-ecological systems. I advocate for a new wave of complex relational systems-thinking as the basis for ‘transformist’ management built on the sustainability meta-competence of systems-thinking that enables more conscious and purposeful management of complex relations. The study contributes to theory by developing a novel complex relational, systems-thinking congruent, model of organised economic systems. The value of this model for empirical research and management practice is established through case studies of wicked problems in social-ecological systems, especially the NRR Floods and COVID-19 in Australia case studies.
