BIR Perspectives

Wicked problems in research data management

I first have to make a disclaimer. Andrew Cox and Professor Stephen Pinfield are colleagues of mine at the Information School, University of Sheffield. Together with Jennifer Smith they have written a fascinating article ¹ on how UK academic libraries, and more particularly librarians, are coping with the requirement to have institutional collections of research data. What I found especially interesting about their article was the use of the concept of a ‘wicked problem’ to frame the discussion of the opportunities and challenges.

In a seminal article, Rittel and Webber ² proposed a distinction between the ‘tame’ problems of natural science and the ‘wicked’ societal problems faced by planners. A tame problem is one that has been seen before and, though challenging, is soluble often in well-understood ways. Many organizational problems are of this sort. The daily problems faced in running a library, even many of the more challenging ones, are essentially tame by this definition. Managing staff or stock or even implementing new systems or discovering user needs are well-understood types of problems for which the profession has developed well-known approaches over many years. A wicked problem in contrast is one that is unique and highly complex, whose definition itself is disputed by those involved, and whose solution is likely to remain unclear.

The authors comment in the article that the distinction between tame and wicked problems is that it offers to put us in a different mindset when we realize that the challenge is a qualitatively different type of challenge. In addition, there have been a number of ideas about how wicked problems need to be approached that could help practitioners. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to explore how useful the notion of wicked problem is to understanding research data management (RDM) and, if this is the case, whether useful suggestions about how to approach the problem differently arise from this understanding. A personal benefit of writing this column is that I have discovered a wealth of valuable research methodologies and outcomes applicable to my consulting work, and as a direct outcome of this article I am now working up an analysis of whether enterprise search optimisation is a wicked problem.

The purpose of this article was to explore how far librarians see RDM as ‘wicked’ and consider whether their responses to RDM reflect advice from the literature about how we need to operate differently in such contexts. The authors carried out 26 semi-structured interviews with library practitioners associated with RDM, focusing on two research questions:

Do interviewees’ characterizations of RDM as an agenda suggest that it fits the criteria for a wicked problem?

The conclusion of the authors is that RDM does qualify as a wicked problem but note that the skills and attitudes we acquire as professionals need to include the attributes that help us to deal with wicked problems. This is a major challenge implying significant culture change for the whole profession. From an Information School perspective, the concept of wicked problems prompted the authors to consider how new entrants to the profession can be educated to operate effectively in the context of the complexity of wicked problems. In fact this chimes with the sense of how the employability agenda in general has shifted toward a stress on collaboration skills, creativity, flexibility, and so on. The Information School at Sheffield regards wicked skills ³ as something of importance. Supporting development of such skills can be linked to the placing of inquiry and research at the centre of its approach to learning and teaching. Inquiry-led learning implies supporting groups to work together to investigate complex, real-world problems.

Newspaper archive management in the USA

This is an excellent and, at the same time, an immensely depressing article. For the last 10 years I have been engaged in some genealogical research on the Allcard family who owned a large country house in Horsham from around 1890 to 1950. My house is built on the site of the house. The wealth of detail I have been able to uncover from newspapers on the family and on the house has been invaluable. In the UK, we are fortunate with the British Newspaper Archive, which has now scanned over 13 million pages from 605 titles. The quality of the scanning and indexing is excellent, as I can testify from personal use. It would seem that the situation in the USA is very different.

Kathleen Hansen and Nora Paul at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota set out to assess the archiving practices at a range of US newspaper publishers. ⁴ They selected 10 news organisations sampled for this study, which were chosen purposively. Because newspapers have the longest history of archiving their analog copies, the researchers chose to focus on newspaper organizations with both print and digital delivery channels, except for one born-digital example and one example that moved from print to digital-only several years ago. The researchers wanted a mix of newspapers owned by large, publicly owned chains and by private entities; those with for-profit and non-profit business models; those that are strictly newspaper companies and those that own other types of news outlets, including television, cable and magazines; those that have had a single owner over time and those that have changed hands many times.

Once the sample was chosen, semi-structured one-hour in-person or telephone interviews were conducted with at least one newspaper staff member who was familiar with the news archiving operation over time. In several cases, the researchers had to speak to three, four or even five people in the same news organization because the various types of archiving activities being investigated were spread across several departments. The researchers asked about the archive practices, if any, of the analogue newspaper, the digital database of that same analogue product, the website, the mobile site(s), news apps, social media feeds, photos/graphics/visuals and related multimedia content, advertising content and any other material that might have been archived. The researchers also asked about methods the public has to gain access to the archive(s) through printed indexes, commercial databases, web searches, social media searches, and so on. Finally, informants were asked to share their views on the issue of archiving content in the current digital environment and going forward.

The outcomes of the interviews are set out in a list of 20 conclusions, any one of which should cause information professionals great concern about the extent to which there will be digital access to newspaper archives. To select just one of the conclusions makes my point.

The Wayback Machine, part of the Internet Archive, is sometimes mentioned by people as the saviour for web content. In fact, the Wayback Machine captures snippets from all of the informant publications except the Gannett-owned newspaper. For an unexplained reason, Gannett blocks the Wayback Machine spiders for all of its publications. For those publications that do allow the Wayback Machine to sample their sites, the capture is for one time on just a few days per month for each publication. Most links on Wayback captures are non-functional, meaning that a searcher can see what the home page and a few other site pages looked like at that moment on that day, but cannot accurately represent the true content, placement, play or dynamics of story movement that is the essence of the web publication at most news organizations.

Measuring information overload

The issue of ‘information overload’ comes up quite frequently in discussions with clients and other information professionals but no one can show any specific instance of when information availability tipped over into information overload. I read very little science fiction but can return time and time again to ‘The Black Cloud’ by Fred Hoyle ⁵ who had a global reputation as both a mathematician and cosmologist. One of the key moments in the book is when the lead character, Kingsley, suffers from the effect of information overload. It would take too much space to set the scene but it’s worth tracking down the book just for the couple of pages on information overload.

In military operations, decisions can literally mean the difference between life and death. Rarely does any research emerge from inside military units, which makes this article ⁶ by a team led by Laura Marusich and Jonathan Bakdash, US Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, USA, of particular interest. In networked organizations, the number of potential collaborations is virtually limitless, as is the potential for information sharing. Consequently, there is a need to understand how the transition to networked environments affects human cognition, particularly, decision-making. This question is especially relevant in command-and-control (C2) domains, such as military operations, emergency response, air traffic control and others in which information from various sources and of varying quality must be quickly assimilated and shared among distributed team members to make critical decisions. The concept of information overload has been recognized for many years as a potential problem for decision-makers in these domains.

Furthermore, previous research suggests that cognitive limitations can constrain the amount of information that can be used and increased information sharing may raise the quantity of available information without a corresponding quality improvement, which presents a challenge as cognitive resources must be devoted to separating the relevant information (signal) from the irrelevant or redundant information (noise). Even when information sharing increases the volume of relevant information, the sheer volume and rapid pace of information can be overwhelming. Indeed, previous research shows that task workload and time constraints interact with and can impair an individual’s cognitive processing abilities.

Simulated C2 environments or microworlds are a useful way of exploring decision-making processes in these more complex domains while still maintaining the benefits of experimental control and have been used successfully to study many aspects of C2 decision-making for individuals and teams. In this article the authors report on two simulation exercises that investigate how information volume and reliability affect objective decision-making in individuals and teams in a military C2 context of locating high-value targets (HVTs). This context provides a clear, easily grasped objective for experimental participants while also representing a real problem domain for military decision-makers. I should make it clear that this is not about drone strikes but about guiding troops on the ground to the location of opposing army unit.

In one simulation, the impact of task-relevant information volume upon the decision-making performance of single participants operating individually in a simulated C2 environment was examined. The goal of the second simulation was to explore the effects of information volume and information reliability upon decision-making performance in distributed operations and additionally upon situational awareness and interpersonal trust.

In the single participant situation the authors did not find significant effects on task performance of increasing the volume of task-relevant information. Participants did not seem capable of using this information. This finding suggests that participants may have been at their limits in integrating information in the HVT task. In the dual participant task, issues arose around arriving at a consensus assessment of the situation, especially when the participants were provided with information whose quality they could not assess.

Now it could be argued that the use of military command-and-control applications is very far away from the reality of managing business information. However, to me, the article is of interest just because of the way in which the application enables the authors to track quite precisely the impacts of information overload and the interplay between the participants when working together on an information-rich task. Collaborative information-seeking applications are starting to emerge and this will require information professionals to adapt to a very different model of information seeking from the traditional one user per screen mode we have been used to since the early 1970s.

Corporate values – what do the words actually mean?

Last year I was working with a global firm with joint headquarters in London and New York. A merger had taken place a few years prior to my engagement, and now that the dust had settled the communications team had decided that it was time for a new corporate message to be promoted. The team decided that the core theme was the ‘bold’ step that the company was taking. I had an occasion to speak to several senior directors in Germany who were very upset by this decision, as the English concept of bold does not have a single direct German equivalent. The German words fett, mutig, kühn, fettgedruckt, dreist and verwegen were all close but meant subtly different concepts.

Major corporations may, as part of their communication strategy, present a number of core values in the form of abstract property nouns, for example, integrity. Such nouns are rich in meaning, which gives rise to a corporate discourse associated with their interpretation. Multinational companies tend to use English as a lingua franca (ELF) to formulate these values in order to reach a global workforce, which in some cases may lead to a need for a translation strategy to capture any cultural differences. This article by Anne Kari Bjørge and Sunniva Whittaker ⁷ is especially interesting because the company is Norwegian. A review of the literature suggests that when using corporate values in multicultural organizations a balance must be found between creating a shared understanding and adapting to local cultures. Moreover, the use of ELF does not guarantee a uniform interpretation of value statements. The interpretation of such statements will be affected by the cultural background of the reader/listener and will not necessarily be in line with the original intended meaning.

The Norwegian multinational company had many global subsidiaries. English is used as the company’s corporate language in order to enable communication between headquarters and subsidiaries and is used in all inter-unit communication. Intranet information for use at headquarters only will be in Norwegian, and in contexts where only one nationality is represented the local language may be used. However, documentation resulting from events of corporate interest is produced in English. Norwegian employees are expected to be proficient users of the language, and using Norwegian in inter-unit emails is not accepted. Thus, an employee who insisted on emailing his China-based Norwegian colleague in his native language started receiving replies in Chinese to drive this point home. However, interpreters may be used in meetings and negotiations in some locations in China. The core values have also been translated into Chinese and German due to the fact that proficiency varies across units, but the translated versions have a different status from the official English versions, as they are only used in their respective country contexts.

Although only one case study was undertaken, the authors suggest some elements of good practice. This includes a carefully planned interactive process between parent company and subsidiaries, which is positive to furthering integration and establishing a desired work culture initiative. Also, presenting an explanation of what is to be understood by the values terms themselves can provide a managerial tool that can be used to work toward a desired corporate culture. A case in point is the emphasis on employees being expected to take decisions when necessary. This can be a challenge to convey to employees in hierarchical cultures. As for relevant factors mentioned in the interviews, the authors highlight the increased shared understanding of the values and their implications for the MNC business culture, the retention of local workforces in the subsidiaries and a focus on host country staffing.

Food and drink – overlooked issues in multicultural team performance

Regular readers of this column will be well aware of my preoccupation with the cultural aspects of information and knowledge management. The recognition of the important role played by food and drink in team performance and knowledge exchange is a key element in the way that my colleague Paul Corney ⁸ works with organizations in the Middle East and Gulf States. My first experience of the challenges of understanding often implicit codes in food and drink date back to the early 1990s when I was a member of a Anglo-American team of consultants and industrialists advising the Sri Lankan government on balance of trade issues. The first morning we were there the Sri Lankan head of protocol announced that in honour of our visit an English breakfast of bacon, fried eggs, sausage and tomato would be served. Indeed it was, but it was served cold because none of the recipe books in the hotel stipulated that it should be served hot. It was quite an experience.

Ann Means, Kate Mackenzie Davey and Philip Dewe ⁹ consider that food and drink are both sensory and symbolic, having the power to evoke cognitive and behavioural aspects of culture in very specific ways as well as being imbued with meanings and value associations. Food and drink are part of both cultural identity and the physical body and, in diverse teams, have the potential to serve as barrier or bridge between cultures, hindering or facilitating team performance. They become what are often referred to as boundary objects, playing roles, instrumental and symbolic, which potentially enable or disable interactions among groups. These objects both play a part in the processes of constrained choice by which team outcomes are achieved and point to the complexity and ambiguity of culture and its influences.

Through a case study, the authors considered whether food and drink does play in the social integration of a multicultural team, how differences in food habits in multicultural teams emphasize cultural differences and reinforce fault lines and how do team members manage differences in habits of eating and drinking?

The team participating in this study worked within a company referred to under the pseudonym ‘FinCo’. The main cultural dynamic of the team was Indian/German, with input also from nationals of Turkey and Mexico. The team was a newly formed group within FinCo, which is a multinational company with headquarters in Germany and a subsidiary company in India. The team had a clear structure and was tasked with developing a programme of web-based learning materials. Indian members of the team worked in India, with extended visits to the head office in Germany. German members visited India for shorter periods. Work processes involved both regular technology-enabled communication (phone calls and computer-mediated communication) and face-to-face interactions.

The conclusions of the authors are that their study suggests that food can serve as a means for considering the nature of culture difference and cultural accommodation. In this way food may play an important part in both the integration and cultural learning that are important for team performance. The social bonding that is assumed to take place over food and drink can however be endangered if the potential of eating and drinking to threaten identities or pose unacceptable burdens leads to withdrawal or subgroup formation. The very aspects of physical comfort and social exchange that allow food and drink to be a source of integration may also present physical and emotional barriers that cannot be consciously overcome or suppressed. Links to religious practice and ideals of cleanliness may add a moral aspect that gives managing strange food and alcohol an explosive potential to expose divisions. Difference may involve, in some circumstances, involuntary or visceral reactions that cannot be minimised or denied and that may present not just the individual but the team with a problem. Differences in food and drink may add to the burden of working in culturally diverse teams. Where diets are limited by the availability of acceptable foodstuffs, or where digestive upsets occur, the effects on team members’ health and ‘physiological resourcefulness’ may decrease individuals’ contributions to both task and relationship aspects of team outcomes.

A few years ago I attended an official Chinese Government banquet in Beijing. I like Chinese food but the identity of some of the courses was difficult to determine. But as we all had Chinese delegates sitting next to us we decided not to ask about the food for fear of being impolite. At the end of the meal I was talking to one of our team members who was Chinese, and asked what we had been eating. ‘It is better that you do not know’ was her memorable reply.

Are Freedom of Information requests always about political transparency?

Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation has been very much in the news recently in the UK as the government seemed to take the view that the legislation was being misused. A Commission was set up in 2015 to assess whether or not sensitive information was being adequately protected. The Commission was reported in March 2016 and I would like to quote one of the paragraphs from the report ¹⁰ as it sets the context for this article by Gregory Michener (EBAPE Fundação Getulio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Benjamin Worthy (Department of Politics, University of London, Birkbeck, UK).

It is the conclusion of the Independent Commission on Freedom of Information (‘the Commission’) that the Act is generally working well, and that it has been one of a number of measures that have helped to change the culture of the public sector. It has enhanced openness and transparency. The Commission considers that there is no evidence that the Act needs to be radically altered, or that the right of access to information needs to be restricted. In some areas, the Commission is persuaded that the right of access should be increased. More generally, the Commission would like to see a significant reduction in the delays in the process whereby without good reason requests can go unresolved for several years. We have not been persuaded that there are any convincing arguments in favour of charging fees for requests and therefore we make no proposals for change.

The authors of this article ¹¹ set out to fill a gap in the literature by beginning to account for why, even though the largest proportion of FOI requests may be non-political and privately oriented, nearly the full spectrum of FOI requests is characterized by politicization, and hence the attendant ‘political’ narratives surrounding FOI. It provides a tool for examining information-gathering broadly conceived as well as a broad literature review of the political nature of FOI scholarship and four hypothesis-generating case studies that illustrate the variable utility and fluid boundaries of the information-gathering matrix. As a central policy implication, the article signals that strategies to diminish the politicization of transparency in general and FOI in particular ought to be priorities for both advocates and governmental administrators.

The initial literature review is very comprehensive and international in scope and runs to almost 100 articles and reports. However, the authors note that there is still a substantial amount of work to do in understanding some of the national nuances of FOI legislation and the way that it has been interpreted by the courts. In total there are now over 100 countries with this legislation. ¹²

The information-gathering matrix components developed by the authors are public vs. private and political vs. non-political. Each of the four quadrants is illustrated with a detailed case study from Brazil, Thailand, Argentina and the UK, making the point that FOI legislation is now widely adopted around the world. The authors conclude that the evidence indicates that users of FOI legislation possess a much broader spectrum of motivations and strategies than those that lie within the political quadrants of this article’s information-gathering matrix. Yet virtually all scholarship on FOI dwells on the political. This political (over) emphasis seems to be an inevitable product of the ‘public’ character of FOI. The four cases discussed in the article indicate that even requests that are prima facie private or non-political can end up politicized if governments perceive the information to be potentially inflammatory, and defensive speculation then increases the probability that officials will err on the side of caution.