Fairness/Cheating; Care/Harm; Authority/Subversion; Loyalty/Betrayal; Sanctity/Degradation; Liberty/Oppression. We become polarized from each other when our moral foundations are too different from one another.

The roots of many wicked problems are connected to relations of conflict and power imbalances among stakeholder groups. These complex stakeholder relations are also barriers to societal/organizational transitions

Therefore understanding power dynamics and mapping the ways in which they manifest in a system (wicked problem) and among stakeholder groups is crucial to problem resolution.

Oppression and injustice are human creations and phenomena, built into our current economic system, and therefore can be undone.

Oppression (e.g. racism, colonialism, class oppression, patriarchy, and homophobia) is more than just the sum of individual prejudices. Its patterns are systemic and therefore self-sustaining without dramatic interruption.

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This new, emerging paradigm emphasizes empathy, relationship, participation and self-organization, calls for new mindsets and postures of openness, speculation, mindfulness and a willingness to collaborate.

Transition Design attempts to reveal and map power relations among stakeholder groups in order to: 1) understand which groups have what types of power in the system (sometimes a group has the power/reason to keep the problem unresolved); 2) identify which groups have little power/are disenfranchised (the work is to help build their capacity and... See more

An imbalance in power relations among stakeholders affected by wicked problems is a barrier to problem resolution. Power dynamics permeate societal systems; its structures, cultural norms, material artifacts and technologies etc;

We use the term “stakeholder” to refer to any group who is connected to or affected by a wicked problem