Stronger Stakeholder Relationships Could Improve Pittsburgh’s Air Quality

Carnegie Mellon, Transition Design Seminar 2022

Team Strange Attractor– Alexis Morrell, Emily Edlich, Hannah Kim, Kristian Pham, Shariq Shah

Introduction

When analyzing wicked problems, it’s important to understand not only the stakeholders connected to the wicked problem: but also the relational dynamics between stakeholders. We classify stakeholders as a group that affects or is affected by a wicked problem — in this case, poor air quality in Pittsburgh.2 Stakeholders can range broadly from human to non-human and non-living entities. Throughout our exploration of Pittsburgh’s air quality, we considered animals, plants, and even the air itself as stakeholders.

Wicked problems are already challenging to solve, but when you consider the complexity of stakeholder relationships they seem even more entangled and “wicked.” Stakeholders have their own definitions of the problem and varying ideas about how to solve them.1 This exemplifies the interconnectedness of wicked problems because stakeholder knowledge and their varying agendas are influenced by their differing mindsets, beliefs, biases, socio-economic statuses, and varying levels of power to name a few.

In order to enact change within a wicked problem, stakeholders must have a common ground from which they can work together. Multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs) can help foster agreement and stronger relationships between stakeholders, who have a deep understanding of both the problem and the courses of action that benefit most. Through an MSP, stakeholders teach from within their domains and, through collaboration and co-learning, align their goals.2 Since stakeholders are integral in crafting a solution for a wicked problem, selecting the right stakeholders is crucial.

Stakeholder Selection

To carefully select our stakeholders, we referred to our initial problem mapping. We noticed that across our five sectors —

• Infrastructure / Science / Technology
• Political / Legal
• Social
• Business / Economic
• Environmental

— certain stakeholders were recurring. We identified U.S. Steel manufacturers, the elderly, individuals with asthma or other respiratory conditions, various flora, and the Allegheny County Health Department among potential key stakeholders.

We determined that Pittsburgh’s poor air quality has three key stakeholder groups:

• the Braddock community
• Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD)
• U.S. Steel in Allegheny County

The Braddock community is the most disenfranchised and adversely affected stakeholder from poor air quality in Pittsburgh. The ACHD is the stakeholder group most invested in affecting change, but they don’t have enough power to enact that change. U.S. Steel in Allegheny County is the stakeholder group with the most power and is the group that contributes the most to the poor air quality in Pittsburgh, exacerbating this wicked problem. Given their power and influence within Pittsburgh, U.S. Steel is also the stakeholder that has the most to gain by maintaining the status quo.

A lot of connections from U.S. Steel in Allegheny County were seen to be conflicting with the Braddock Community. One desire of U.S. Steel in Allegheny is less regulation of their emissions from manufacturing. This conflicts with one of the hopes of the Braddock Community — where they hope for policymakers to enforce policy changes for more regulation of emissions. A connection between the two that is complex is how U.S. Steel is creating jobs for the area and the Braddock Community wishes for a stronger economy for the Braddock Community. This is a complex relationship because even though the Braddock Community wants jobs, it conflicts with their agenda to increase their overall health.

A lot of connections were seen to be largely conflicting between U.S. Steel in Allegheny County and ACHD. One area in which these stakeholders are conflicting is how they both care about their reputations, but they would maintain their reputations by going against each other’s agendas. Despite their overall negative connections, they also have some complex connections. This complex connection revolves around their prioritization of the economy and public health.

The connections between ACHD and the Braddock Community seemed to be more aligned with their goals. One area in which both of these stakeholders align is how they both wish for cleaner air and more regulation with air pollution. Both stakeholders also align with how they would both benefit from clean air — ACHD would get higher scores for air quality and the Braddock Community would potentially get healthier.

Key Insights

Through mapping the key stakeholders for poor air quality in Pittsburgh, several insights came to light. One key insight is how change in policy is important to solving this wicked problem. This is seen through the ACHD and the Braddock Community having agreeing connections revolving around getting policymakers involved to enforce air pollution regulations. Another key insight found was how the ACHD and U.S. Steel Mill both have their interpretations of how the economy and public health should be treated — exemplified through their mismatched prioritization of both. Further, both ACHD and U.S. Steel care about their reputation and image but are being executed in conflicting ways — ACHD’s reputation would increase if there was a handle on improving air quality while U.S. Steel’s reputation would increase through indirectly making air quality worse. Even though the Braddock Community and U.S. Steel largely disagreed with one another, they found common ground in creating a job market. However, this is a complicated relationship because a diverse job market comes at the expense of the overall health of the Braddock Community.

Conclusion

Stakeholder mapping is essential when it comes to understanding the inner workings of a wicked problem — primarily because wicked problems are exacerbated by these relationships. Through this exercise, it has been discovered that there are some common goals between the key stakeholders, but achieving these goals in their current means would further widen the gap between the stakeholders. One of the most challenging parts of this activity was determining whether or not a connection was aligned, conflicting, or complicated because sometimes it just boiled down to considering items outside of the scope. Despite stakeholder mapping being a beneficial tool to solving a wicked problem, wicked problems are also heavily rooted in their history and how they came to be. This is the next step of exploring and studying a wicked problem.