What is it about?
This chapter outlines an innovative and challenging approach to modelling how public policy can impact upon the main outcomes which public agencies seek to achieve in a metropolitan area. It draws upon the longstanding literature on cause-and-effect mapping to identify the pathways to outcomes in a key service area and to explore how the relative cost-effectiveness of alternative pathways to outcomes can be calibrated. It then discusses how some aspects of the public sector’s interventions cannot be modelled convincingly in this way, because they have the characteristics of complex adaptive systems. The consequences of this for public policy are then explored.
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Why is it important?
This study explored the modelling of cause-and-effect chains for economic development in Birmingham, both in the case of a set of 'complicated' service interactions and in one case where there was a strong likelihood that the inter-relationships concerned formed a complex adaptive system. It challenged policy makers to expose the basis of their decision-making and reveal the extent to which they had evidence for their choice of pathways to outcomes.
Perspectives
The identification and testing of pathways to outcomes is still very undeveloped in UK public services, in spite of several decades of emphasis on 'evidence-based policy'. This chapter demonstrates how pathways to outcomes can be constructed and tested - but also shows that here are situations in which such an approach is NOT likely to be productive, especially in the context of complex adaptive systems.
Professor Tony Bovaird
University of Birmingham
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This page is a summary of: Managing complex adaptive systems to improve public outcomes in Birmingham, UK, Edward Elgar Publishing,
DOI: 10.4337/9781782549529.00024.
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