Dealing with complex issues : Networking, creative dialogue and a sense of audience in environmental management

摘要

In recent years organisational decision-makers have been portrayed within the'Media,,and academic literature, as struggling to deal with complex, transboundary issues.Such issues typically involve interactions between social and natural processes whichproduce effects distant in time and space from their recognised cause, with pertinentprocesses transcending the boundaries of interest and authority associated with anysingle organisation. In these situations, debate about the significance of phenomena,and about who should respond, is often intense with consensus apparently limited tothe belief that not enough is known. Using the arena of environmental managementas its central example, this thesis argues that those who consider themselves part ofthe process of dealing with such complexity should seek to be guided by an acute`sense of audience'.This call for reflexivity - continually modifying one's behaviour in response to anemerging appreciation of how others interpret a dynamic situation in which one isactively engaged -is demonstrated in both the content and structure of the researchpresented in support of the thesis.Through an adaptive research process characterised by continual movement betweenthe field and relevant literatures, the `sense of audience' thesis is joined by emergentconcepts of `networking' and `creative dialogue'. These provide practical guidanceon how pertinent perspectives can be brought together to discern desirable andfeasible interventions on complex issues. Grounded in insights gained throughparticipative research with organisational actors attempting to develop integratedapproaches to environmental management in a range of settings, these emergentconcepts are interwoven with aspects of the contexts that inspired them, to produce a`constituitive process theory' of the formation of `adaptive response networks'. Thistheory shows how networks can form across organisations when diverse stakeholdersare encouraged to share their concerns, data and expertise about complex,transboundary issues.