When addressing problems with wicked tendencies in higher professional education, students experience complexity, uncertainty, and value divergence. Furthermore, they are confronted with disciplinary, organisational, and sector boundaries. Prior research has revealed variability in students’ experiences and boundary-crossing behaviour when dealing with problems with wicked tendencies. In this study we explore these differences by identifying student profiles based on the attributes that comprise the competence for dealing with problems with wicked tendencies, and by identifying their relations with students’ boundary-crossing behaviour and relevant work experience. Person-centred cluster analysis in a sample of first-year students (N = 264) from a bachelor’s programme in social work identified four student profiles, based on students’ self-assessed degree of creativity, critical thinking, initiative, proactivity, risk tolerance, and work efficacy. Meaningful relations with students’ prior work experiences and their boundary-crossing behaviour were found. These profiles could serve to better understand students’ boundary-crossing behaviour when confronted with problems with wicked tendencies, and help teachers foster the development of all students.

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Public service organizations (PSOs) link on the one hand the government and the law, and on the other hand citizens, via the delivery of public services. Based on the state of the art of standards, principles and processes of human/user-centered service design, we analyze the practices in Dutch PSOs. The basis for this are practices documented on a weblog by a practitioner-researcher reporting and reflecting on four projects over five years. Based on this online journal we identified five themes that influence human/user-centered service design in PSO-practices. 1) Tension between collective and individual needs, 2) Public services should be inclusive for everyone, 3) A top down, hierarchical culture prevents user focus, 4) User feedback competes with policy implementation and IT-changes, and 5) PSOs are part of a larger service ecosystem. We conclude that to deliver truly human/user-centered public services, service design in PSOs should focus on more than just design process aspects and also take into account the law and policy making that precede the design and delivery of the service, as well as the institutional and (inter-) organizational perspective. For service design standards, principles and processes to be applicable to public design contexts, these should be expanded or customized to be able to deal with the specific dynamics of PSOs.@en