Deltagardemokratiska och systemiska metoder för komplexa samhällsfrågor och samhällsentreprenörskap. Ett komparativt perspektiv

Abstract

The study: ”Deltagardemokratiska och systemiska metoder för komplexa samhällsfrågor och samhällsentreprenörskap. Ettkomparativtperspektiv” (Participatory and systemic methods for complex societal issues and societal entrepreneurship. A comparative perspective) by Päivi Turunen, is a substudy in a research project entitled ”From concerned citizen to effective societal entrepreneurs - Cognitive transformations and the role of scaffolding”, carried out at the Department of Sociology and Work, Gothenburg University, and financed by the Swedish Knowledge Foundation. The focus of the substudy is on a comparative description of the form, content and significance of the methods employed and how these methods have successively become a dimension of societal entrepreneurship and vice versa. Today’s complex societal problems and issues have necessitated a search for alternative methods and solutions in several areas of modern society. What the advocates of participatory, democratic and systemic methods and societal entrepreneurship allege is the need to open up new arenas for reflection and action creating new opportunities for change and development. This would also include taking new, innovative initiatives by means of greater interactive knowledge and improved methods development transcending the traditional sector boundaries and the lines dividing academia and other actors in society. The study has been conducted interactively in close co-operation between researchers and practitioners and comprises three types of data: a literature survey, a questionnaire- based survey and a focus group discussion. The literature study presents a survey of methods and societal entrepreneurship in general. Ten strategically selected methods are described and scrutinised more thoroughly in a comparative perspective based on the literature study, on a survey and on a focus group with ten process facilitators. Both manifest and latent data are described and analysed. The study indicates that complex societal problems are a question of so-called wicked issues requiring constant discussion and deliberation in an ever-changing world. With regard to societal entrepreneurship, this has come to replace traditional entrepreneurship in many forms, methodological forms included. Both deliberation and innovation on and around complex societal problems and issues can be supported by using the methods examined, aiming as they do to elucidate and discuss, in a process-oriented and creative fashion, current problems and issues from several different perspectives, with the aid of a facilitator. The methods have both similarities and differences regarding country of origin, underlying ideas and range of application. Their direct aim is not to solve problems but, rather, to facilitate discussions and processes enabling a more systematic and innovative management of current problems and issues. The key to the outcome of the processes lies with the participants, not in the methods or the facilitator in themselves. The underlying significance consists in the creation of time, space, structures and processes to bring out the energy, knowledge and competence existing in the participants and together to realise and take responsibility for the results. A more theoretical scrutiny of participatory, democratic and systemic methods reveals connections with system and action theory. Seen from the policy angle, the development of these methods touches on the reflexive modernisation and new management systems described as governance. It is based on network organisation, necessary components of which are deliberative democracy and soft methods of deliberation. An increase in knowledge and research on the subject are underway, necessitating continued theoretical and critical research and reflection.