Developing the core principles of responsible knowledge management (rKM): Section 2.8.1 – Systems thinking in practice: wicked problems
This article is Section 2.8.1 of Chapter 2 of a series featuring my Master’s thesis The Emerging Concept of Responsible Knowledge Management (rKM): Identifying and Formulating the Core Principles of rKM.
The practical significance of this systems orientation becomes even clearer in light of Rittel and Webber’s1 influential diagnosis of “wicked problems”, a concept that exposes the futility of treating complex, pluralistic societal issues as though they were solvable puzzles with optimal solutions.
Writing in the context of policy planning for social sciences, but with implications that resonate with economics and therefore knowledge management (KM), they argue that many of the most urgent problems facing organisations and societies are fundamentally unresolvable in traditional terms. These problems cannot be definitively formulated, have “no ends to the causal chains”, and have “no true or false answers.”
Resolutions to them can only be judged as better or worse, depending on the values and perspectives of those involved. Every resolution is consequential with new “waves of repercussions” that pose “another set of wicked problems.” In such conditions, any attempt to locate the problem in something risks oversimplification and unintended consequences. This, too, mirrors the limits of mainstream KM, which often frames its task as identifying optimal solutions to specific issues, without attending to the web of complex interrelations and its interpretive pluralism.
Rittel and Webber push this systems sensibility further by showing how its implications unfold in practice. They argue that both the problem formulation and every attempted resolution reflect a particular position and are ultimately political. In open systems, problems cannot be resolved once and for all. Each intervention generates new feedback and new tensions. What this means is that there are always many possible paths forward, none of which can claim universal validity, only provisional legitimacy.
From a systems perspective, this is not a failure of planning but its condition: decisions must be made in full awareness of their partiality. The logic here is not optimisation but ‘satisficing’2 (Simon, 1991), acting well enough, for now, in a way that remains responsive to change. Plurality is not just an inconvenience; it is the mark of a living system. Rather than suppress it, systems thinking demands that we remain accountable to it.
Next part: Section 2.8.2 – Post-normal science: ethics for complex systems.
Article source: Koskinen, H. M. (2025). The Emerging Concept of Responsible Knowledge Management (rKM): Identifying and Formulating the Core Principles of rKM. (Master’s Thesis, LUT University).
Header image source: Created by Hanna M. Koskinen using ChatGPT.
References:
