Translating and Organizing a Wicked Problem: Making sense of the EU promoting human rights for LGBTI persons in Uganda

The world is said to be growing increasingly complex, posing a growing array of ‘wicked’ problems to public administrations in today’s modern and interconnected globalized world — problems characterized by high levels of complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty. Many organization scholars argue that these types of problems can be dealt with through top-down solutions, what they identify as prescriptions of greater knowledge, closer coordination and better strategies; however, such arguments generally ignore a key aspect: that public administrations organizations already address wicked problems. This omission, and specifically the ways in which a staff within a public administration define and manage the facets of a wicked problem in day to day work, forms the basis of this study which takes serious the claim that the definition already presupposes the ‘solution’ of wicked problems and therefore has to be the starting point of analysis. Examining an according particularly wicked case in the EU’s promotion of human rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans* and intersex (LGBTI) persons in Uganda, this study investigates how a wicked problem is defined and dealt with. This question is addressed as a process of translation and sensemaking at the point of proto-institutionalization, in other words as a negotiation in times of (high) modernity steeped in complexities, uncertainties and ambiguities of changing institutional environments over time, nested hierarchical levels and different cultural contexts. This research, through a qualitative case study, therefore addresses the empirical puzzle of how the topic of human rights for LGBTI persons, despite its highly contested nature, travelled between Brussels and Kampala, became codified in form of LGBTI Guidelines (2013) and institutionalized within EU foreign policy. Through a grounded theory-inspired methodology and based on data from interviews, observations, and documents, it becomes evident that a combination of changes in the environment and staff’s ability to link the topic to existing frames factors, rather than an external shock or a strategic decision, lead to their institutionalization. The main finding of this study is that staff at public administrations confronted with an issue that could be considered ‘wicked’ proceed to organize it. They make sense of the issue in a way that allows them to work on it and ‘solve’ it. This is done in a negotiation process of filtering out the aspects that appear relevant to the actors embedded in the local context and fit with existing categories and programs, de/coupling those that can be dealt with from other aspects, and by justifying and promoting the sense made as a way to handle this issue. Strong factors in this sensemaking process taking place at local level are the immediate organizational aims and tacit knowledge of staff members in combination with underlying institutions reaching back to colonial times. This study therefore shows that wicked problems do not require any differently designed organizations, but are organized and dealt with by public administrations through applying off-the-rack solutions which are necessarily also ‘partial and provisional’, and which are modified along the way and made workable leading to a temporary equilibrium.