Institutionalising social learning: Towards systemic and adaptive governance Raymond L. Ison a,b, * , Kevin B. Collins a , Philip J. Wallis b a Applied Systems Thinking in Practice Research Group, Engineering & Innovation Department, The Open University, UK b Systemic Governance Research Program, Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia 1. The problematique Thompson and Warburton (1985) once sensibly set out to find out what was wrong with the Himalayas, acknowledging that the problem was to know what the problem was. Underlying their work (see also Thompson, 1993) was an appreciation that scientific research and policy options incorporate social constructions of reality based on certain sets of assumptions that frame how a situation is understood. It follows that a particular framing, a perspective for making sense of a situation (Scho ¨n and Rein, 1994), leads to particular sets of acceptable practices and actions offered as suitable responses or ‘solutions’. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in e n v i r o n m e n t a l s c i e n c e & p o l i c y 5 3 ( 2 0 1 5 ) 1 0 5 – 1 1 7 a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Available online 24 November 2014 Keywords: Wicked problems Messes Systemic inquiry Climate change adaptation Social learning Systems approaches a b s t r a c t This paper critically examines how public policy makers limit policy and other institutional design choices by a failure to appreciate (i) how situations may be characterised or framed; (ii) how practices that generate neologisms (invented terms or concepts) or reify (make into a thing) abstract concepts can displace understandings, and (iii) the epistemological bases of governance mechanism choices. An inquiry into the coining of the neologisms ‘wicked’ and ‘tame’ problems is reported and the implications for research and policy practice explored. As practices, neologising, reifying, categorising and typologising have unintended conse- quences – they remove us from the primary experiences and underlying emotions that provided the motivation for formulating these concepts in the first place. The failure to institutionalise the understandings and experiences that sit behind the invention of the terms ‘wicked’ and ‘tame’ problems (or similar framing choices such as ‘problematique’, ‘messes’, ‘lowland real-life swamps’, ‘resource dilemmas’ or ‘complex adaptive systems’) present systemic constraints to institutionalising social learning as an alternative yet complementary governance mechanism within an overall systemic and adaptive gover- nance framework. Ultimately situations usefully framed as ‘wicked’,’ such as water man- aging and climate change are problems of relationship – of human beings with the biosphere. Re-framings, such as institutions as social technologies and other research and praxis traditions concerned with the breakdown of relationships may offer ways forward in the purposeful designing and crafting of more effective institutions. # 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author at: Systemic Governance Research Program, Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia. Tel.: +61 404 308 180. E-mail addresses: Ray.Ison@monash.edu (R.L. Ison), Kevin.Collins@open.ac.uk (K.B. Collins), Phil.Wallis@monash.edu (P.J. Wallis). Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envsci http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2014.11.002 1462-9011/# 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.