Following a career in local government, my motivation for this book has two sources. Firstly, a desire to introduce local governance practitioners (whether public, private or third sector) to a range of established approaches to help think differently in a place which is firmly âupstreamâ of the more usual world of practice. Importantly for local government authorities, it is an approach which is not dependent upon expensive restructurings, special funding initiatives or pilot projects. It relies somewhat less on âdeliveringâ projects and somewhat more on listening and adaptation on a continuous loop of learning. Secondly, a wish to corral a range of complexity, systems thinking and Operational Research approaches, whose accumulated value lies in the variety of its expertise which could help to address the evolving challenges of local governance. I hope to explain why there is a compelling case for this association between such accumulated scholarly expertise and the practice of local governance to take place. To help this along a little way, I have grouped a selection of approaches drawn from complexity, systems thinking and Operational Research with a hope that those who are experts in these fields may feel a strong sense of a collective future opportunity within the mainstream sphere of local governance.
Problems cannot be solved with the same mindset that created them
A rapid sequence of local government reforms has taken place since the 1990s, resulting in the oft-repeated capacity-building themes of innovation and learning, collaboration and leadership. Frequent reference is also made to perceived barriers to progress such as silo working and silo budgeting. In order to be in a position to address these capacity-building themes and overcome these perceptions of barriers, a greater variety of thinking skills is needed, which lies upstream of the usual world of practice. Although a variety of established approaches could potentially help to address these challenges in terms of human resource (supply), practitioners (demand) do not seem to be aware of this variety of approaches, resulting in a supply/demand dysfunction. The idea of even looking for ways to spend time to think, or think together, as the daily work unfolds is a poor fit to the inherited relics of the âfast-pacedâ performance management and accountancy culture which was wrought by the legacy of New Public Management (Hood 1991; Hood and Peters 2004) and subsequently (what is referred to as), the age of austerity (Lowndes and Pratchett 2012; Allen et al. 2014). Furthermore, a fundamental dilemma is that the usual modes of thinking and working (which are disciplinary and largely mechanistic) will not help us to address these complex systemic challenges effectively (whether in practice or through research). This is thus a similar plight to the quotation often assigned to Einstein along the lines of: âproblems cannot be solved with the same mindset that created themâ. The level of ambition in endeavouring to start at this point is difficult, to say the least. Also, it is very doubtful that a different âmindsetâ would ever âsolveâ the complex problems of local governance, but it may be that taking multiple viewpoints into account may help improve the effectiveness of action. This positioning as a basis for thinking is reminiscent of Meadowsâ most effective level of where to intervene in a system as âthe power to transcend paradigmsâ in her classic paper (Meadows 1999, p. 3). Although this is the most profoundly difficult level to pay attention to, it is perhaps better to endeavour to address this issue with sophistication than to simplistically ignore it. This first chapter thus concludes with âa journey to the empty quarterâ, which identifies the different forms of thinking that have been lacking in both research and practice. Such an approach is characterised by an initial willingness to start from a different place compared with the norm. This is not, however, cause for pessimism, but presents a viewpoint of new opportunities opening up, working in a practical way within the here and now. Optimistically, there are signs that there is an appetite for exploring similar integrated approaches of research and practice in order to strive to be effective in real-world conditions of complexity (van de Ven 2007; Rhodes et al. 2011; Alvesson and Sandberg 2013; Bammer 2013).
This book thus joins in gladly with that greater endeavour and focuses particularly on the potential scope of a selection of complexity, systems thinking and Operational Research approaches within the sphere of local governance. Its premise is that a range of such approaches could be more fruitfully utilised to extend thinking and help to address the contemporary challenges of local governance in the twenty-first century. Resource could be re-contextualised towards better-conceived plans and actions, shedding light on the possibility of adopting a normative human agency approach through the application of a range of approaches to extend thinking.
Although written on the basis of UK practitioner experience and research in the local governance sphere, its potential application could be extended to other tiers of government and to the private and third sectors both in the UK and in other countries. The approaches which are drawn together and outlined in this book are each established in their own right.
The âDemandâ Side of the Equation: Local Government
Thinking differently, thinking outside the box, working on complex challenges; itâs not just about innovative thinking. Itâs no longer just âthe leader decides,â there is a role to generate capacity to address problems. Local government representative (Hobbs 2016, p. 197)
Above are the words of a local authority senior manager, talking in December 2014 about the complexity of the challenges facing local government practitioners on an everyday basis. By definition, the enactment of leadership in local government is subject to being sensitive to a unique set of dynamic local circumstances, people and reputation. The concept of a human-centred approach has been evolving and strengthening over a decade or so, with the value of human agency being identified following an independent assessment of local government improvement and future prospects (Grace and Martin 2008). Grace and Martin (2008) concluded that the future rests on development, transformation and innovation, rather than technical improvement and incremental change, taking advantage of human agency and interactions at the local level. A new skill set required has been termed âcontextual leadership skillsâ which transcend previous transactional and transformational ones (Solace et al. 2013). This suggests that, being faced with a broad set of statutory duties, changes to models of operation, reducing fiscal budgets and local demographic data rooted in the social and economic history of an area, the ability to design and lead a collective capacity to address complex interconnected problems relating to social, economic and environmental matters has become an important role for local government. Accordingly, this book addresses the prospect of actively designing collective human capacity for local governance through expanding the skill set of adaptive social learning, which could form a basis for such an approach.
Beyond the Mechanistic Paradigm?
Garnering collective capacity is a matter of fundamental importance to the evolving face of public service required to face the emergent conditions of complexity within the twenty-first century. This contrasts with the style appropriate for the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century and the Efficiency Agenda of the late twentieth/early twenty-first century (which was further exacerbated by the global economic crisis of 2007/2008). More recently, an underlying theme of local government reform relates to the need for systemic thinking and the breaking down of âsiloâ working, moving beyond mechanistic approaches (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister et al. 2006, p. 37; Commission on 2020 Public Services 2010; Oyarce 2011; Oyarce et al. 2012). Most significantly, an international project examined how the role of government for the twenty-first century should be redefined in a post-industrial era. The UK Roundtable Report (Bourgon 2010) concluded that worldwide public service reform initiatives undertaken over a period of thirty years have been mechanistic and focused on efficiency, while at the same time failing to address todayâs systemic challenges. It argues that new approaches are required that lie beyond the mechanistic paradigm in order to deal more adequately with such complex problems, amounting to a change of mindset. Furthermore, the characteristics to achieve this change would be dynamic, with an approach that is bottom-up (rather than top-down), outward-looking (rather than inward looking), addressing root causes (rather than symptoms), skilled at relationships (rather than processes), change accepting (rather than resistant), networked (rather than siloed), personal (rather than impersonal) and enabling and co-producing (rather than doing). It concludes that this calls for a paradigm shift that will not be achieved at the level of specific problems. This suggests that collaborative, exploratory and learning skills become important, thus creating a shared ability to explore, examine and address âupstreamâ root causes.
The Local Government Reform Agenda: Efficiency and Improvement
Local government plans and resources a range of duties, responsibilities and services which are crucial to the functioning of our society. This includes, for example, education, public health and social care, transport, housing, spatial and environmental planning, management and protection. Many p...