Provide a developed critical evaluation of the climate change issue in terms of the extent to which it can be regarded as a wicked problem: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT Assignment, OU, Ireland

The wicked problem of tackling climate change across the Irish public sector. Climate change, and how we respond to it, is amongst the most challenging issue facing humans at the current time. Addressing the problem is not without difficulty due to its nature. Along with a considerable number of other actors, the Irish public sector, has a role to play in this urgent, multi-dimensional, and complex problem. This assignment requires you to assess the nature of the problem as a strategic issue for the public sector and to evaluate the difficulty of achieving substantive and tangible measures to address it.

In order to do this, you are required to do the following:

1. Provide a developed critical evaluation of the climate change issue in terms of the extent to which it can be regarded as a wicked problem. To do this, you need to identify and argue the extent to which the characteristics and features of wicked problems are evident in the climate change issue confronting the Irish public sector both in how it deals with the issue in its own management and in how it encourages and obliges business and society to prepare and respond. You may frame your answer within a particular policy field such as agriculture, transport, construction, enterprise, etc.

2. Provide a critical evaluation of the extent to which a cross-cutting or network approach (with examples within and across public and private sectors) is necessary to address the issue of climate change;

3. Identify the relevant conflicts and tensions that exist amongst the relevant stakeholders and critically evaluate the position of the principal stakeholders in terms of motivation, power and interest in terms of climate change and what implications these positions have for addressing the issue;

4. Based on your prior evaluation in parts 1 to 3 above, you are required to provide a reasoned overall assessment of the likelihood of the Irish public sector successfully addressing climate change with substantive and tangible measures

Assignment Objectives

The assignment seeks to challenge the student to integrate different concepts and thinking from across the module in order to develop an appreciation of the multidimensional nature of many strategic issues.

Along with the broader module level intended learning outcomes for Strategic Management (such as recognising different approaches to strategy and their implications, appreciating the importance of context to strategy, applying different strategic management tools and techniques, and critically reflecting
on how strategy is developed, implemented, and evaluated in different contexts, etc), this assignment

aims to assess the student’s ability to:

• Understand the nature of some of the problems, from time to wicked, encountered in strategic decisions;
• Understand the roles of rational, objective, and more subjective approaches in strategic choice and the social and individual constraints on decision making;
• Understand some of the approaches to collective decision-making for more difficult or wicked problems;
• Understand some of the issues related to crosscutting issues;
• Understand the importance of stakeholders in the capacity of an organization (or system) to pursue its strategy;
• Assess the likely power/influence of stakeholders in the implementation of a particular strategy.