Design Theory for Generating Alternatives in Public Decision Making Processes

Abstract

Literature about public decision making experiences, including stakeholders' engagement, offers best practices but also reports of unsuccessful case studies. Meaningful participation activities require direct integration of stakeholders into all the phases of the public decision process to unleash innovation. Often, policy making incorporates participation late in the process, after the problem definition has occurred, alternatives have been defined, without considering stakeholders' knowledge and problem understanding. The early stage of policy alternatives design is essential to the development of policy. Our research presents an extensive literature review with respect to policy design and design theory in order to show that the formal process of generation of alternatives has been little investigated. There is a demand for methodologies aiming at supporting policy makers and relevant stakeholders during policy design. In this regard, this paper introduces (and explores) the operational role of design theory in the policy making process for the generation of policy alternatives. Design thinking, as a way to inform a collective problem definition leading to innovation, highlights the value of early stakeholders' engagement. The aim of this paper is to understand, from an operational point of view, what "design" means in a policy making context, developing an innovative approach for assisting the formalization of policy design. The paper uses the results of a pilot case study to illustrate the application of the Concepts-Knowledge theory framework to support the innovative design of policy alternatives for the groundwater protection policy of the Apulia Region (southern Italy). Response to Reviewers: Dear Editor, Many thanks for the opportunity granted to further improve the manuscript. We are thankful to the Reviewers for the appreciation of our revisions and we list below our answers to their last suggestions. The section numbers refer to the revised manuscript. The revised text has been highlighted.

Designing Innovative Management for Cultivated Biodiversity: Lessons from a Pioneering Collaboration between French Farmers, Facilitators and Researchers around Participatory Bread Wheat Breeding

“…In order to meet the actors' expectations of both enhanced social learning and the design of new tools, methods and strategies for managing cultivated biodiversity, the researchers proposed to apply a collective design method. From the range of existing methods (see [24,35]), they chose the KCP (Knowledge-Concept-Proposals) method [39,40]. This collective design method seemed particularly suitable: first, it was designed to lead a large group to collectively build an innovation strategy; and second, it relies on collective design workshops that foster knowledge sharing, the identification of knowledge gaps, and the exploration of innovative ideas.…”

“…The KCP ® method has already been described extensively in several articles (see [24,35,37,40]). We thus briefly present the different phases of the method and how they were implemented in our case (see Figure 2).…”

“…Beyond its complexity, the management of cultivated biodiversity must contend with many unknowns [22] and unpredictability, such as the behavior of a variety mixture on the middle-term. It thus seems particularly relevant to involve stakeholders, not only to leverage their experience to identify the most appropriate management and collective action strategies, but also because including different stakeholders' knowledge in a structured way helps to unleash creativity and to design new solutions ( [23] quoted by [24]).…”

“…Yet, in the case of participatory wheat breeding in France, conflict resolution and collective problem farming were not so much of an issue as fostering social learning and designing new solutions to enhance interactions between participatory breeding stakeholders. While most participatory approaches endeavour to involve stakeholders in the process of deciding between different options, design approaches focus rather on the generation of new options [24,35].…”

“…In line with research focused on developing participatory design methods in the field of natural resource management (see for instance [24,36,37]), researchers on the INRAE DEAP team, in partnership with a design science researcher (INRAE SADAPT team), proposed to adapt and apply a collective design method to the specific context of participatory wheat breeding. This initiative was launched in response to the partners' call for new approaches that would allow the research team to support local collectives in mobilizing knowledge to design wheat mixture selection and management methods tailored to their specific context.…”