In this lecture professor Lene Foss (Jönköping University) will give a short review on the literature on “Wicked problems” and discuss how this literature can be applied to study current leadership in society. She will base the lecture on current empirical research on principals and superintendents at “Skolchefsinstitutet” at Jönköping University. Foss will reveal how school leaders identify and handle wicked problems, how they make sense of wicked problems and how they relate to other actors in handling wicked problems. Finally,  Foss suggests drawing on research on responsible leadership to better frame the relational and ethical aspects of leadership in todays’ society.

Lene Foss is a PhD holder (Dr. Oecon) from The Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Bergen, Norway with extensive experience in the field of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. She served as a Professor at the School of Business and Economics, UiT- The Arctic University of Norway from 2010 to 2019, where she is currently Adjunct professor. Foss visited various esteemed institutions such as University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.  Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK and  Säid Business School, University of Oxford, UK. She has been a visiting research fellow at Clare Hall College, Cambridge, UK and Green Templeton College, Oxford, UK.  Currently, Foss serves as Professor of Pedagogy at Jönköping University and a leads the Institute of Responsible Education Management (Skolchefsinstitutet). She is a life member of Clare Hall College, Cambridge, UK.