Preparing students for wicked times ahead

With the accelerating rate and increasing complexity of developments and disruptions in domestic as well as foreign markets, interest among practitioners and academics has intensified on how best to improve organizational agility and strategic flexibility (Combe 2012). At the same time, questions are being raised about the value of conventional business models and concepts to capture these changes and permit firms adequate time/resources to adapt and respond accordingly (Gomes, Emanuel, Sousa, and Vendrell-Herrero 2017; Harrigan 2017). This may be due in part that many strategic issues are not just tough or persistent but are “wicked” and defy decision-makers to come to any consensus about root causes, the problems at hand or potential solutions (Camillus 2008). New paradigms to augment or supplant traditional business education are needed in order to prepare students to deal with the ever increasing incidence of “wicked” problems they are expected to encounter throughout their professional careers (Olver 2012). Drawing upon the public policy, corporate governance and strategic/operations management literatures, alternative approaches to mitigate “wicked” problem effects are discussed. The presentation gives recommendations on how best to incorporate “wicked” problems into an already full business curriculum.