Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology J. Community Appl. Soc. Psychol.

, 14: 193206 (2004)

Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/casp.774

Processes of Social Learning in Integrated Resources Management

CLAUDIA PAHL-WOSTL1* and MATT HARE2
1 2

ck, 49069 Osnabru ck, Germany Institute of Environmental Systems Research, University of Osnabru ck, Germany Seecon Deutschland GmbH, Osnabru

ABSTRACT
In recent years the human dimension and governance issues have gained more and more in importance in the management of natural resources. One important aspect is to understand the processes of social learning that precede any collective decision-making. The HarmoniCOP project developed a framework for social learning for resources management that can be interpreted as combining content management as well as social involvement processes to achieve both technical and relational outcomes. Social learning was taken into account in a new approach called participatory agent based social simulation. Participatory agent based social simulation deviates in a number of ways from conventional modelling. The actors themselves whose behaviour is represented in the model and who are supposed to later use the models for decision-making and strategic planning, participate and contribute to the modelling process. Models serve as tools of communication in processes of social learning. This article reports on a Swiss case study which dealt with the development of new management strategies for urban water management. It will provide examples of how different techniques can be used to establish a process of social learning within a long-term participatory management project using participatory agent-based social simulation. Social learning is highlighted as important for management regimes that require changes in social practices, roles and responsibilities. Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key words: integrated water resources management; social learning; group model building; participatory processes

INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL LEARNING In recent years it has become increasingly evident that the human dimension plays a key role in resources management. Problems are complex, uncertainties are high, prediction is possible to a limited extent only and integrated approaches to resources management are advocated. This implies that management is not a search for the optimal solution to one problem but an ongoing learning and negotiation process where a high priority is given to
* Correspondence to: Claudia Pahl-Wostl, Institute of Environmental Systems Research, University of ck, 49069 Osnabru ck, Germany. E-mail: Pahl@usf.Uni_Osnabrueck.de Osnabru

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Accepted 27 February 2004

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questions of communication, perspective sharing and development of adaptive group strategies for problem solving (Huxham, 2000; Pahl-Wostl, 2002a, 2002b). Such a process is becoming known as social learning. The notion of social learning has been used in quite different meanings to refer to processes of learning and change of individuals and social systems. In the inuential work of Bandura (1977) social learning refers to individual learning based on observation of others and their social interactions within a group, e.g. through imitation of role models. It assumes an iterative feedback between the learner and their environment, the learner changing the environment, and these changes affecting the learner. This approach is too narrow to embrace all the learning processes of relevance in resources management. Of major interest in this respect is the concept of communities of practice developed by Wenger (1998) emphasizing learning as participation. Individuals engage in actions and interactions that have to be embedded in culture and history. Such interactions are inuenced by and may change social structure and, at the same time, the individual gains experience situated in a context. Such learning processes conrm and shape the identity of the individual in its social surroundings. They conrm and change social practice and the associated interpretation of the environment. Such a broad understanding of social learning that is rooted in the more interpretative strands of the social sciences characterizes also the approach adopted by the HarmoniCOP (Harmonizing COllaborative Planning1) project. Figure 1 represents the framework for social learning developed in the HarmoniCOP project to account for learning processes in water resources management (Craps, 2003; Bouwen & Taillieu, 2004). This framework embeds the process of social learning for resources management in a context of governance structure and natural environment. It emphasizes that in the process of resource management, social involvement (e.g. the generation of social capital, the development of new social practices) is as important as content management (e.g. the development and communication of knowledge about the state of a water resource, use models to predict the effects of measures to achieve a good ecological state of a river). The outcomes of the management process are not only technical qualities such as an improved state of the environment but also relational qualities such as an improved

Figure 1.
1

Conceptual framework for social learning for resources management.

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capability of the actors in a basin to solve conicts and come to cooperative agreements. The outcomes feed back into change and mutual tuning of governance structure and the state of the natural environment. Social learning is an iterative and ongoing process that comprises several loops and enhances the exibility of the socio-ecological system and its ability to respond to change. Key ingredients for social learning in resource management For a collection of actors to build up the capacity to engage in social learning for resource management processes, several capacities need to be created amongst the actors:        awareness of each others sometimes different goals and perspectives; shared problem identication; understanding of the actors interdependence; understanding of the complexity of the management system; learning to work together; trust; the creation of informal as well as formal relationships.

The mutual interaction between content management and social involvement in the process of resources management implies that soft, relational, and hard, factual aspects of analysing and managing a human-environment system must also be combined (Johnson, 2000; Pahl-Wostl, 2002b). It requires a combination of methods from hard systems analysis (data collection and quantitative analysis) and soft systems analysis (knowledge elicitation and engineering (Feigenbaum, 1977; McGraw & Harbison-Briggs, 1989), group model building (Vennix, 1996), qualitative analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1998)). The next section will provide an example of a participatory group model development process for urban water resource management illustrating how a variety of different techniques can be made use of to provide the elementary ingredients for a successful social learning process leading to new resource management ideas.

AN EXAMPLE: THE FIRMA PROJECT The European FP5 project FIRMA (Freshwater Integrated Resource Management with Agents), completed in 2003, aimed to investigate how water resource management may be improved by combining participatory approaches with agent-based social simulation (see Hare & Deadman, 2004, for a review of such simulation techniques). Agent based social simulation is a very promising approach to represent the complex dynamics of social systems and to develop integrated models for human-technology-environment systems. It is an excellent potential framework for combining insights from different social science disciplines and it is particularly suited for being used in participatory processes (Pahl-Wostl, 2002a). The result of the combination of these two practices, participatory agent based social simulation, deviates in a number of ways from conventional modelling. As in group model building (Vennix, 1996), the actors who are supposed to later use the models for decision-making and strategic planning, participate and contribute to the entire modelling process. This guarantees that the model captures issues that are of relevance to the actors involved. In addition to group model building, however, the agent-based aspects of the resulting models mean that the actors themselves are represented in the models. As
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well as capturing their subjective perceptions and expectations within the model, the social and human elements of water resource management are also represented. This allows the actors to incorporate their decision-making into assessing the outcomes of management decisions and, importantly, to use the model as a medium by which they can represent and reect upon their own and others goals, beliefs and perspectives. Models and the whole process of model development therefore become part of a process of social learning. One key assumption is that the process how a model is developed is as important as the factual knowledge included in the model and the model simulations nally produced. This agrees well with the idea of social learning outlined in Figure 1 emphasizing that social involvement and content management are both of major importance in management processes. The Swiss case study of the FIRMA project The case study adopted to provide this example is that of a Swiss city which, rather unusually, is experiencing the negative effects of over capacity in water supply. Earlier reports about this case study can be found, for example, in Hare and Pahl-Wostl (2002). Problem. The problem was the need to transform management from supply-side resource management, which had led over the years to an overestimation of demand and a resultant pumping capacity 2.5 times the current level of what was a decreasing average water demand. The goal was to develop some strategy ideas that would reduce the gap between demand and supply whilst maintaining the nancial security of the water company and also recognizing the importance of promoting water saving (which currently threatened that nancial security). The task in this case study was not to support a current planning exercise, but instead to bring together the main actors into a social learning exercise so that new ideas and plans could be generated that might be proposed to decisionmakers in the future. Thus, using Mosterts terminology (Mostert, 2003), the actors were asked to participate at the level of co-designers of a set of management plans, one level lower than actual decision-making. The Swiss case study, lasting over two and a half years, involved a project team that consisted, at various times, of two facilitators/modellers and a system analyst collecting and analysing data, which, in all, provided the equivalent of 3.5 person years of work, generating seven mental models, one conceptual model, four implementations of that model, three questionnaires, and two workbooks in over 45 hours of individual and group discussion time. The structure of the process can be seen in Figure 2. Representatives from different stakeholder groups were assembled in a so-called actors platform. The groups involved were identied in an institutional analysis characterizing all stakeholder groups of relevance for regional water supply and water demand. Their organization, role and interactions were determined from interviews and document analysis. The water supply utility had a special role as central actor and one of the main clients of the products of the whole process. As such, it was consulted as to the nal composition of the actors platform. Alongside the water supply utility, the platform included representatives from the wastewater utility, a housing association, a manufacturer of water using technologies, the architects association, the plumbers association, the consumers association, the association for water and gas utilities, and the city council. Each member of the platform acted as representative of his/her constituency. Up to eight actors would be present in the platform at any one time.
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Figure 2.

The process structure of the Swiss case study leading to new management strategies (Hare & Pahl-Wostl, 2002).

Individual interviews were initially carried out to elicit mental models (Doyle & Ford, 1998) of the actors. These provided the project team with cause and effect relationships in the water management system and actor networks from the perspectives of the different actors. These views were discussed in the actors platform and the project team built a common unied model of the system. This model was then implemented in several different forms (e.g. inuence models, role play games) to support actor platform discussions about management and policy exercises. The results of these activities were written up in workbooks and further discussed and edited by the actors platform. The workbooks became the nal documentation of the co-design process and the management ideas that were generated. On completion of the project, an independent psychologist was employed to evaluate the experiences of the actors during the process. How social learning was encouraged More information about the process as a whole and, in particular, the elicitation of actor networks can be found in Hare and Pahl-Wostl (2002). This section of the article, however, will concentrate on what techniques were applied to provide the ingredients for social learning, discussed in the earlier section, within the actors platform. The ingredients discussed are: awareness of others perspectives; understanding actors mutual dependence and system complexity; learning to work together; elicitation of soft data; and creating trust. Awareness of each others perspectives and goals. The main technique to support the sharing of perspectives within discussions was to use hexagon modelling. The hexagon method, developed by Hodgson (1992), is a straightforward method for quickly eliciting, from groups or in this case individuals, ontological, relational, and general structural knowledge about systems directly into a graphical model representation ready for discussion. In deference to the Nominal Group Technique (Delbecq, Ven, & Gustafson, 1975), each actor was helped to generate their own model, and this was done, in private, outside the actors platform. Figure 3 shows two mental models obtained from two different actors
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Figure 3. Two actors mental models of the same water management system.

with the hexagon technique. A comparison shows the difference in emphasis on what the priority themes are, despite both actors having had the same overall topic impacts of water saving from which to base their model. Individual actors then presented their models during the actors platform. This was the point at which each actors views could be shared and discussed. Transferring the perspectives of the actors onto paper permits the sharing and learning process to begin. Elicitation of soft data. Whilst hexagon modelling was used to elicit soft data about the system, soft knowledge about the actors and how they interacted was elicited in the main using card sorting techniques. Card sorting is an elicitation method that has roots in clinical psychology and is often practised in the discipline of knowledge engineering for expert systems (Rugg & McGeorge, 1997). Its strengths are in gathering information about given concepts in terms of how they are categorized in the minds of the subject whose knowledge is being elicited (Gammack, 1987). Although not directly developed from the psychological theory of personal constructs [Kelly, cited by (Shaw & Gaines, 1987)], as other contrived methods have been, the utility of card sorting as a method appears also to be based on an assumption that categorization concepts play a central role in human cognition. During card sorting the interviewed actor was given a set of cards, each of which had a name of an actor within the management system. Copying the method used in Maiden and Hare (1998), the actor was then asked to sort the cards into meaningful groups, to state the criterion for the sorting and the categories used to group particular actor cards together. The actor repeated this task for different criteria until there were no further criteria to suggest. The protocol of this interview, along with information from the hexagon modelling exercises, earlier, then provided material with which the project team could produce a map of how the actors interacted in various different aspects of the management work. Understanding actors mutual interdependence and system complexity. A simple role playing board game (Figure 4) was developed which, based on an agent-based model of the management system in the city, represented each actors role in the system (Hare, Heeb, & Pahl-Wostl, 2002). Each actor in the platform, instead of taking on their own roles, was asked to play another actors role. Not only was this another good technique for perspective sharing (in that actors had to see the management system from the point of view and goals of another actor) it was also an effective method of allowing people to discover how their own actions affect and interact with other actors decisions. For
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Figure 4. The role playing gameplaying environment and game components.

example, what was new for some actors was to see how vulnerable the nances of the water utility could be to decisions made by the authorities and sanitary system manufacturers when they promoted water saving given the high level of xed costs of the water utility. Also of note was the realization that the institutional separation of the water supply utility from the waste water supply utility led to difculties in coordinating what are necessarily interconnected management activities. Learning to work together. The method employed here was the joint, interactive use (Benbasat & Lim, 2000), that is, the interactive use of a single model by a group of actors. The model jointly used in the Swiss case study was a system inuence model generated by the project team from the integration of the mental models of the actors, elicited earlier. Figure 5 (left) shows this model, a kind of digraph. The task the group had to work together on was to use the model to test the direct and indirect outcomes of various policies they had discussed and selected for further analysis in earlier discussions. To do so, rst, a policy was selected (e.g. subsidize water saving technology) and the specic hexagon representing the variable that would be directly manipulated by this policy was identied (e.g. sales of water saving technologies). The actors then had to specify, using cardboard arrows (see Figure 5 (right)) whether the variable would increase or decrease as a result of the policy. The group were then asked to follow the inuence arcs from this variable to other system variables (such as amount of water saving or prots of manufacturer). It was explained to them that the act of following an arc from one hexagon to another hexagon implies that the variable represented by the latter hexagon

Figure 5.

A low-technology inuence model (left). The joint use of the inuence model for assessing policy outcomes (right).
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is inuenced and consequently altered by the variable represented by the preceding hexagon, either directly or inversely proportionally (as indicated by the arcs). The actors then had to identify and discuss (with use of cardboard arrows once more) what type of changes might occur to these variables and then follow, until no more inuences remained unchecked, the consequences of these changes along further arcs into the various economic, water supply, waste water and consumer components of the model. This type of work had several advantages. First, the model used was based on their own mental models, so terms and constructs were already familiar to the actors. Second, the size of the model (1.5 m 1.5 m) allowed all actors to interact directly with the model. Third, the primitive nature of the modelling technology (cardboard hexagons, sellotape, washable marker pens and a wipeable plastic table cloth) had the advantage over computer models used in groups, in that the actors could directly alter any of the contents of the model without requiring either a specialist modeller or patience whilst the model was being updated. Trust. Trust between the research team and the actors was to be supported by making sure that project goals, actors roles and rules for the actors platform were discussed at the beginning of the process. There were limitations, however, to how open the project team could be about the process and how it would unfold. Since it was a long-term research project in which new participatory methods would be developed and tested, it was not possible to inform the actors about the methods to be applied at the outset, since the research team itself did not know. In response to the teams concerns about a possible loss of trust during the project, the project team organized a post-project evaluation of the process by an independent psychologist with members of the actors platform. This also aimed to increase trust levels for future projects. Process results Table 1 summarizes the different steps in the whole participatory process. The rst column lists the month, the second describes the type of actor interaction, the third the activity undertaken and the fourth describes the major themes discussed. Table 1 refers also to focus groups held with citizens. The results from citizen focus groups were fed back into the actors platform to provide more information on the perspectives of an important group that was not well represented by the consumer association since the issue had not attracted much attention before. The results of the process as a whole can be described in terms of relational qualities and technical qualities. Relational quality outcomes included the creation of a forum in which for the rst time in the city, the major actors could come together to discuss current and future management plans and problems. Up to now, such issues as the need to improve inter-actor communication, to increase awareness of the complexities of actor interactions and to share perspectives were not explicitly addressed in water management planning with its very technology-centred tradition. From the independent psychologists evaluation we also conrmed that most actors reported that a benet of their involvement had been learning how to use new techniques (role playing, hexagon modelling, joint use of inuence models) to support their communication and planning of management issues. Reecting different levels of starting knowledge, as well as the polarized perception of the process, some actors reported learning more about the system and its complexities whilst others did not. Similarly, half of the actors interviewed also reported that they had learnt more about their own perspectives
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Table 1. Major themes and results

The timing of activities and results of the actors platform discussions

Month Interaction

Activity

Group kick-off brainstorming Identication of issues

23

Individual interviews

Card sorting and hexagon modelling

Elicitation of mental models

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Group meeting

Presentation and discussion of mental models

Questionnaires

Individual reection on the choice of key factors in mental models and to what degree they could be inuenced

Group meeting

Scenario analysis and discussion of a water saving scenario using structure models (not described in this article)

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Group meeting Questionnaires

Testing the role playing game Individual reection on expected trends for system indicators

Water saving, efciency. What does the consumer want? What are effects of water saving? What makes a water supply system efcient? Methods to achieve water saving, importance of information to raise awareness were discussed. Consumers were perceived as being important but not interested in the issue. They need to gain more information about the effects of their water consumption decisions. Barriers for water saving mainly in pricing structure of water and lack of information. Consumers are not aware of their consumption levels since a xed rate is included in the rent and most are inhabitants not houseowners. The city is water rich but it is mad to use so much drinking water to ush toilets. Technology changes may aid water saving more than price rises. Key factors easily inuenced by actors were the clarity of the water bill structure and information about water saving technologies. Key factors not easily inuenced were the water price, water supply infrastructure and consumer behaviourfactors that would indicate the difculty of adjusting the system. Problem of the independence of real costs from the amount of water supplied once the infrastructure is put in place was discussed. The water utility was not against water saving per se, but it was discussed that it could result in adverse effects such as reduced nancial security and water quality. The architects representative and the manufacturer of sanitary technology argued in favour of water saving. Reasons may be motivated by an European trend for sustainable water use. The game and the ability to swap roles were very positively received. All agreed with high certainty that water demand would not increase over the next 10 years but expectation about the degree of potential decrease in demand and the effects of changes in water prices and water pricing structure on it were much more uncertain. Continues

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Table 1. Major themes and results The separation of water supply and waste water treatment was identied as an institutional problem. A problem was identied whether or not governmental subsidies or taxation would have to be used to support the water utility nancially in case of falling water demand resulting from increased sales of water saving technologies. Water is not a theme of major concern for the citizens. Very little knowledge about the system and their own role in it. Water supply should be reliable and prices should be fair by being related to individual consumption.

Continued

Month Interaction

Activity

14

Group meeting

Role playing game to promote discussions about future of water supply

1819 Focus groups with the citizensnot the actors platform

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22

Group meeting

Investigation of awareness of consumers on their own water demand and attitudes towards water price and water saving. Discussion of project results Reection on the change in emphasis from the start during the whole process of the platform

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Closing meeting

Saving costs through the reduction of the supply capacity infrastructure is not possible in the short and medium term due to high xed costs and a resistance to reduce water supply security. Regionalization of the water supply (see main text later) was put forward as one solution to reduce the gap between demand and supply in the medium term without adversely affecting nances of the utilities. This should go along with more consultation of the public. They should make a conscious choice on the desirable level of supply security. Discussion and revision of workbook Findings detailed in workbook were judged to be requiring minor revisions. Policy priorities were tested successfully using the system inuence model. summarizing actors ndings. Discussion of policy priorities and use Actors rated the joint, interactive use of this model highly. of inuence model to test these policies.

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and had improved their understanding of the role of the other actors. Unfortunately, trust in the intentions of the research, resulting from a lack of a clear explanation of the process, however, was reportedly low. From the increased awareness of others perspectives, technical quality outcomes emerged. It became evident during the process that in the system there is a conict between different actor norms, each of which, on its own, had merits:     Supply security must be high. Water saving is a desirable goal. Financial security and efciency of water supply should be high. Water prices, according to the public, should be seen to be fair and costs should be charged based on consumption.

These norms were seen to conict with each other in various ways. Having a very high water security locks the system into high xed costs, which reduces the chances of the water utility remaining nancially secure in the face of increasing water saving. As the nances of the water utility become threatened, not only does the ability of the utility to maintain a high security infrastructure get weakened, but also, in order to safeguard economic security, the income from water provision needs to be decoupled from water consumption levels, thus further tariffs based on covering the xed costs of water supply need to be introduced. This goes against the public norm of fair pricing and, in a direct democracy as practiced in Switzerland, this can lead to the water utility not getting the required public support for future pricing or supply security plans. Lastly, when one decouples water price from water consumption, an important driver of water saving is removed. The major outcome in terms of technical quality, therefore, was a transformation away from considering supply side management as a means to reduce the gap between supply and demand, and instead towards thinking outside the box to reach a policy in agreement with the four norms. The resulting idea was a policy of regionalisation including public consultation. That is, rst, the public should be consulted about the levels of water supply that they deem to be reasonable given nancial limitations and the problem of xed costs. Then any excess water supply above this level of security, resulting from a water-saving led reduction in demand, could be sold off to the regions outside the city. In this way, nancial security could be maintained at the same time as maintaining the other norms. This is an outcome peculiar to the unique nature of the problem in this Swiss city. Each social learning process would generate its own transformations. Table 2 outlines new paradigms and new roles for different stakeholder groups in different management regimes (Pahl-Wostl, 2004). Critique of the approach and outlook The absence of a direct link to a formal political decision-making process (e.g. ofcial mandate for recommendations on management changes to be delivered to the city council) in the case study reported here was both an advantage and a disadvantage. The openness of the process fostered the discussion of innovative ideas. However, there may be a lack of commitment due to the non-binding nature of the process. Discussions sometimes lost focus as a result. A related point that deserves attention and needs to be handled with care is the sometimes ambiguous distinction between research and problem solving goals, i.e. the actors platform as an instrument of analysis and research, and the platform as an
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Table 2.

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Comparison of management regime transformations per stakeholder group Current management regime New management regime Maximum supply security irrespective of economic and environmental costs Provide sufcient supply capacity to meet peak demand at any time. Maximum security. No demand management. Expect sufcient water at any time. Little knowledge about the system. Little responsibility. Indirect payment of costs via subsidies. Economic and environmental efciency in meeting the demand for water related services. Manage the balance between supply and demand. Manage average and peak demand. Be aware of objectives of the system as a whole. Active participation in making conscious choices regarding water demand options.

Kind of objectives and roles Overall paradigm governing the water supply/demand system Objectives and role of water utility

Objectives and role of consumers

instrument of promoting a solution oriented process. As always in action research the two goals are mutually dependent but the double nature of the process and of the role of the actors may be a source of friction. This friction can be minimized by involving the actors in the design of the research processes and in the supervision of progress and by being very explicit about the goal of each step. The long length of the process and its research nature meant that sometimes, as reported in the independent evaluation of the process, trust broke down between the research team and the actors because the latter did not always know what was going to happen next or the purposes of the process had been lost in the mists of time. One cannot overlook the costs and difculties of maintaining a social learning process for long periods of time with people who have other work to do: both the research team and the actors. The somewhat polarized ndings of the psychologists evaluation of the actors experiences also indicate that there will inevitably be difculties in developing a process to meet the diverse needs and starting levels of knowledge of heterogeneous actors platforms. Participatory modelling for resources management is an expanding eld. Approaches can vary enormously (see Hare, Letcher, & Jakeman, 2003, for a more detailed comparison of four case studies). Common group models, for example, may be developed from scratch by the group as a whole (see the Mahuwe case study in Lynam et al., 2002), rather than being built up from individual mental models as used in the Swiss case study. Participants may also not be representative stakeholders; processes may instead be bottom up, composing of members of the community who have direct control over resources (see the Ngnith and Mahuwe case studies in Lynam et al., 2002), or top down, composing of members of one or more governing authorities (Letcher et al., 2002). Also, joint model use is often carried out using computer simulations (Barreteau, Bousquet, & Attonaty, 2001) rather than with paper models. Bousquet et al. (2002) propose a companion modelling approach to participatory modelling for resource management that combines model development and joint model use phases with data collection in the eld. Different approaches will provide different contexts in which social learning may or may not thrive. Whether social learning thrives or not according to a particular approach is a research question still to be answered.
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Over the past years increasing emphasis has been devoted to processes of decision making (mainly based on formal decision theory) in resources management whereas processes of social learning have largely been neglected up to now (Pahl-Wostl, 2002b). However, the Swiss case study provides evidence for the importance of processes of social learning for understanding transformation processes in human-technology-environment systems. Hence it is important to stimulate more scientic exchange and joint research between different elds to improve our understanding for processes of social learning and the role of different techniques to facilitate it.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This method of participatory agent-based social simulation was further developed and applied in a number of case studies under the umbrella of the European FP5 project FIRMA (Freshwater Integrated Resource Management with Agents). The authors r Bildung und acknowledge the nancial support of the BBW (Bundesamt fu Wissenschaft) Switzerland and thank the actors platform members without whom this work would not have been possible.

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J. Community Appl. Soc. Psychol., 14: 193206 (2004)