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Enabling Political Legitimacy and Conceptual Integration for Climate Change Adaptation Research within an Agricultural Bureaucracy: a Systemic Inquiry

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Abstract

The value of using systems approaches, for situations framed as ‘super wicked’, is examined from the perspective of research managers and stakeholders in a state-based climate change adaptation (CCA) program (CliChAP). Polycentric drivers influencing the development of CCA research pre-2010 in Victoria, Australia are reflected on, using Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) to generate a boundary critique of CCA research as a human activity system. We experienced the complexity of purpose with research practices pulling in different directions, reflected on the appropriateness of agricultural bureaucracies’ historical new public management (NPM) practices, and focused on realigning management theory with emerging demands for adaptation research skills and capability. Our analysis conceptualised CliChAP as a subsystem, generating novelty in a wider system, concerned with socio-ecological co-evolution. Constraining/enabling conditions at the time dealing with political legitimacy and conceptual integration were observed as potential catalysts for innovation in research management towards better handling of uncertainty as a social process using systemic thinking in practice (StiP).

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Notes

  1. This is not the actual name of the program but the one we use in this paper to discuss a boundary critique whilst endeavoring to protect the identity of participants and the organization. Where appropriate we use pseudonyms for the names of programs and ministries.

  2. Rather than use triangulation to affirm convergence of evidence typically used in sociological inquiry, Seale applies a concept of triangulation to offer different views to surface a critical engagement with the way a particular problem is framed or understood and to generate new insights to problem definition.

  3. We acknowledge the choices made for this nesting of policy drivers. Another significant international document which potentially could have shaped CCA research in Australia is the 2008 Synthesis Report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development – the outcome of an international process in which Australia participated (although it did not endorse the final report).

  4. For purposes of anonymity we do not reference these strategies in this paper.

  5. We treat these two participants as one interview as their perspectives were similar, views expressed during interview reinforced each other and there was no attempt made by either participant to contradict or challenge each other.

  6. Conceptual model is use here as distinct from mental model used by Rook and Watson (2017), as conceptual model was the main construct of SSM used to conceive of ‘relevant systems’. Mental models are more closely aligned with the work that people do in the ways they interact with their work environments. Conceptual models abstract away from work to articulate a purpose for activities that may differ from the actual activities. We address this tension by engaging with theory-in-use (mental models) versus espoused theory (conceptual models).

  7. Quotations included in the analysis are from interviews conducted between 23 Sep 2009 and 14 May 2010)

  8. Land and Water Australia, the organization responsible for the development of the climate change research strategy for primary industries (CCRSPI) was disbanded in the year following this publication in a Federal government restructure of land and water research.

  9. By systemic we mean something that has an appreciation of how it operates as a whole system through its integrated or articulated parts performing a function that means more than simply a sum of its parts. By adaptive we mean something that is responsive to changes in its environment such that it also maintains a sense of its distinction from the environment in which it operates as a self-organising intelligence.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgement goes to members of the Victorian Government Ministry who supported this work and those who have participated in the research. Some funding and administrative support was provided by Monash University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scion, Forestry Research Institute, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Andrea Grant

  2. Applied Systems Thinking in Practice Group, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

    Ray Ison

  3. Centre for Regional & Rural Futures, Faculty of Science Engineering & Built Environment, Deakin University, Melbourne Burwood Campus, Burwood, Australia

    Robert Faggian & Victor Sposito

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  1. Andrea Grant
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  2. Ray Ison
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Correspondence to Andrea Grant.

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Grant, A., Ison, R., Faggian, R. et al. Enabling Political Legitimacy and Conceptual Integration for Climate Change Adaptation Research within an Agricultural Bureaucracy: a Systemic Inquiry. Syst Pract Action Res 32, 573–600 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11213-018-9474-7

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