Nineteenth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

Megaprojects that potentially entail substantial economic gains but also enormous environmental risks, like the construction of a hydro-electric dam or the expansion of a pipeline to transport oil, put decision makers in the public sector under public scrutiny. This type of problem/situations/decisions in public sector policy making is called a “wicked problem,” a term which was coined to define highly complex, uncertain and intractable societal issues that are ambiguously defined and highly resistant to resolution (Rittel, 1972). Wicked problems can be seen as “expressions of competing values and goals” (Norton, 2005: 133) where a variety of stakeholders, each with a particular notion of the issue at hand, try to influence and determine its definition and the nature of its resolution. Underlying the public debate over the decision to advance or not with a megaproject there is the way policymakers frame the problems. The lack of consensus on how a wicked problem is framed by actors with competing values and interests is indeed considered the most salient aspect of such public policy issues and the core of the theory defining them. This paper explores framing effect at collective/organizational level in real settings. We conduct a comparative case study of two recent megaprojects undertaken in Canada. The case study is conducted from a narrative approach using event-structure analysis (ESA) based on evidence collected from