Natural Resource Administration

Introducing A New Methodology For Management Development

C. West Churchman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367165352
• eBook ISBN: 9780429716331
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Successful natural resource administration demands the well-exercised ability to deal with the interests of many actors--including the public and wildlife--in a balanced, constructive way. The authors of this book, recognized as experts in the management of natural resources, discuss management with special emphasis on fish and other wildlife. Their approach to management development constantly searches for creative compromises that protect today's wildlife for future generations while maximizing present social and economic benefits. Their comprehensive treatment also includes a discussion of such topics as the interaction of human management of wildlife with natural regulation of wildlife; the need for sound research and development programs; the importance of public participation in the management of natural resources; and the political and administrative context in which resource management must take place.

Part 1
Emerging Patterns and Problems in Administration of Natural Resources

Preface: Interrelationships in a Natural-Resource Agency

Spencer H. Smith and Albert H. Rosenthal

Until about I960, an administrator of fish and wildlife programs dealt essentially with one constituency, the hunter and the fis herman.

With the advent of "Earth Day", all fish and wildlife administrators witnessed a phenomenal growth and change in the total constituencies of their agencies. The nation entered an era of environmental awareness, and fish and wildlife programs were selected as ideal indices of how all living creatures were faring in their environment. Thus, most environmental-advocacy efforts now tend to focus on particular renewable resources.

The increase in constituencies has added greatly to the complexity of administration in this area. In addition, the government administrator in providing leadership is faced with the personnel impacts resulting from the increasingly negative public opinion of government in general.

This set of papers considers some of the emerging patterns to which an administrator must be responsive in providing program guidance and supervision in the current setting. This general area was the theme of several discussion seminars attended by the authors of this set of papers and led by Lynn Greenwalt, who was at the time Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Out of these discussions, several of the less obvious areas involved in natural resource administration emerged as highly significant.

While some of the discussions opened with the problems of relationships between natural-resource agencies, the attention and focus of the group moved to consideration of the problems of effective relationships within the agencies.

One of the relationship areas in which there appear to be few guidelines concerns the statutory committee and its interrelationships with the agency. In this area, we asked William Carey, who was Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and who had served as a member of a statutory committee, to explore some of the questions that would arise when a statutory visiting committee of independent, nonagency people was set up over a scientific bureau within a government department. Some of the significant questions he considered are (1) whether the committee is the director's, the agency head's, or the government's, (2) whether the committee was established to "look good", (3) whether it can be objective, (A) what its limits are, (5) whether it provides a useful liaison function, and (6) what its pluses and minuses are.

Much more has been written about the "professional". In athletics and similar fields, it is a person who is paid for services. Some writers, however, set specific standards to define the term. Kornhauser states that four criteria are essential if a person is to be considered a professional. These are:

1. Specialized competence that has a considerable intellectual content.
2. Extensive autonomy in exercising the special competence.
3. Strong commitment to a career based on the special competence.
4. Influence and responsibility in the use of the special competence. ¹

In looking at the professional in a natural-resource agency, Churchman, in his paper, treats the questions of how the professional sees himself as a vital part in a large government science agency, what the factors are that reduce the effectiveness of professionals in public agencies, and what the impacts of control and communication are in affecting self-images and motivation.

Rosenthal's article addresses the problem of the scientist-specialist who has turned administrator. Rosenthal looks at some of the concepts found significant to effective administration in large science agencies. He gives special emphasis to research done by several leading figures in the field of motivation. With the current criticism of government, and particularly of science agencies, his distillation of the findings of research in this field is significant, particularly in the light of Churchman's questions of the scientist's self-image in large science agencies.

To gain the full perspective of emerging patterns and problems in natural-resource administration, we would be remiss if we did not include the view from state government. Accordingly, Jack R. Grieb, who was then Director of the Colorado Division of Wildlife, with the insight of a state administrator, raised the key questions of what the interface is among federal, state, and local units; what difficulties state administration has as a result of the disparate actions of different federal agencies in the field of natural resources; and what state directors perceive as their roles and that of their organizations in the total picture.

The aim of these papers is to point up some significant areas of interrelationship that have often been overlooked and to raise questions that will stimulate thinking and discussion, rather than to give definitive answers.

¹Wi11iam Korrihauser, Scientists in Industry: Conflict and Accommodation, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962, pp. 115-116.

1
On Classifying Rare Species: The Statutory Visiting Committee

William D. Carey

In the innocent fiction of public-administration literature, descriptions of management systems mythologize the separation between "line" and "staff". In easier times, perhaps the yard markers were more or less visible; but the modern pluralism of management with its yen for distributed authority has largely obliterated the distinctions. Consequences follow, among them a notorious difficulty in defining and locating accountability.

Where, for instance, in the anatomy of a science-oriented government agency would we situate that anomaly known as a statutory visiting committee? This invention is not of recent origins, and its history tells us that the flea of accountability has been tormenting the hide of government for upwards of a century. The idea itself represents a kind of technology transfer from the regions of higher education to a type of government activity that is centered on intellectual creativity and learning. To a decided degree, the mechanism, like its equivalent at a university, is meant to furnish an independent check on the institution's management as well as its excellence.

All this makes for more excitement in government operations than might be suspected, especially when the visiting committee takes itself seriously. There is an implicit trigger for policy conflict in the arrangement. Equally, there is the risk that the visiting committee's independence may be transformed into the role of shill, or carnival barker, for the aims and ambitions of the enterprise whose conscience it is imagined to be. It is not unknown for a visiting committee to end up "marrying the natives", and in the best of worlds there is a nearly irresistible pressure on the visiting committee to support the generic activities being carried on. In that sense, the committee is at once both watchdog and advocate.

But it is the set of interrelationships arising from the arrangement that concerns us now. We can take as a given the proposition that in a scientific or technical activity there is a place for external oversight; the proposition squares with the fundamental notion of checks and balances. Interrelationships necessarily arise: between the visiting committee and the bureau director; between the experts on the committee and the technical or program managers; between the committee and the Presidential appointees who run the agency; between the visiting committee and elements outside the department, such as Office of Management and Budget (0MB), the Science Adviser to the President, and committees of Congress. The interrelationships may be highly developed and intensive or, in some cases, tangential and opportunistic. What matters is not so much the interrelationship itself as its quality and motive. A statutory visiting committee actually is capable of doing good for the organization it serves, but can also do it harm. That risk of doing harm is largely a function of how the visiting committee is perceived in the context of its interrelationships--and how it perceives itself.

The first question is whose committee it is. Newly inducted members frequently do not find out before their terms expire. At one time or another, the visiting committee appears to be the bureau director's. At another juncture, the bureau director takes a back seat and the visiting committee finds itself in close combat with the Cabinet officer heading the department. In still another incarnation, the visiting committee takes matters into its own hands and speaks over the heads of both the bureau and the department to 0MB, the Congress, and the public. The normal relationship of the visiting committee, however, is that of a benign and "friendly" source of opinion and support to a harassed bureau director. It hears confessions, reinforces the director's confidence in bureau objectives, and goes to bat for bureau priorities when the budgetary struggles begin. By virtue of its statutory independence, and frequently its prestige, the committee can often speak its piece with a vigor and tone which a wise bureau director would emulate only at considerable risk. The visiting committee which functions in this style, however, also runs a risk of being seen as a tame creature doing the bureau's bidding; and then its credibility at higher levels may suffer a fatal decline. Repairing that image usually is next to impossible.

On the other hand, the visiting committee can be a highly useful instrument of policy management in a setting where expertise or technical judgment plays a large role in setting goals and operational objectives. If the committee is composed of individuals with impressive professional credentials, as it should be, its voice cannot be ignored when it comes to evaluating technical performance, the state of the art, or tradeoffs in allocating scarce dollars or positions to alternative targets of basic or applied research. This is priceless advice obtained at the cheap cost of an airline ticket (economy class) and a motel room. Administrators at higher levels, including budget officers, will think twice before disregarding such judgments. So, for that matter, will the bureau director.

Where the statutory visiting committee shines is as a partner of the agency and the bureau director in pointing the organization to new directions. Here is where the value of the external body can be very great. If the bureau is an old-line activity which lacks a noisy public constituency, it is likely to be "kept on hold" when the departmental masters concoct their plans and goals. The opportunity for the statutory visiting committee is to fight that syndrome and to take a direct hand in forcing extended planning exercises which relate the past and present missions of the bureau to expected changes in demands, thus injecting renewal and drive into the bureau's roles and missions. This is a task which is often extremely hard to do inside the bureau itself, where the psychology of conservatism, constraint, and hanging-on serves to keep thinking close to the ground level. In the same way, but in the other direction, a visiting committee has on occasion done yeoman work in staving off kinetic attempts by departmental officers to divert a technical bureau's funds and activities away from essential basic work in order to fund politically popular, but transient, programs.

One of the human aspects of a visiting committee is its vanity. It wants to be wanted. It needs to be reminded that its work is appreciated. Not long ago, a prestigious visiting committee came very close to rebellion when its scheduled annual appointment with the Secretary was cancelled abruptly and mindlessly, not once but twice. An alarmed Assistant Secretary was obliged to ambush the Secretary in midpassage and instruct him in protocol while the committee members held a wrathful caucus. Blunders of this sort lead to resignations and hard feelings. The visiting committee expects the respect that is its due, and it will not serve willingly in the absence of an attentive audience. It is seldom prepared to settle for the role of a cosmetic decoration on the department's door. The antics of gesturing towards "participative government" will not work with a first rate visiting committee.

The language of the enabling statute is critical in legitimizing the statutory visiting committee. If it merely commands that such a committee be selected and appointed without spelling out its responsibility, all is lost. Responsibility is the key. The wider its scope, the better. Times change, and bureau missions move on. A gatekeeper role is not good enough; the visiting committee must prod, prompt, and lead. In addition, it must know to whom it is responsi-ble--to the director, the Secretary, the President, or the Congress. Vagueness in these matters can generate strife and compromise legitimacy. But neither is legitimacy open-ended; a visiting committee can hardly behave as a general community nuisance, unsettling operations or quarreling publicly with the department or the administration. Even here, however, a nice question of responsibility can arise. If a statutory visiting committee were to back off from a situation such as arose years ago when a Commerce Secretary sought to overrule the technical judgment of the director of the National Bureau of Standards in the celebrated battery-additive case, it would give visiting committees in general a permanently bad name. In such a situation, the dictates of responsibility serve to amend the bounds of legitimacy.

What to disclose to a visiting committee and what to hold back from it pose another nice dilemma for a bureau director who is expected to maintain departmental privacy and discipline while he must at the same time play fair with the statutory committee. The question is likely to arise where privileged information is concerned. To take an example, one agency found itself under orders from above to reprogram its funds drastically and proceeded to do so. Its visiting committee heard about this after the fact and found the outcome an unpleasant and troubling surprise. Why had the agency not informed the committee sooner and sought its advice? The response was that it was an administrative matter to be decided within the departmental chain of command, and the committee was not in the chain. Sharp words followed, some members charging that the committee had been blindsided. When the committee questioned the program directors of the bureau about the reprogramming, there were no objections. Subsequently, how...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• INTRODUCTION: MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT--POLICIES AND PEOPLE
• PART 1 EMERGING PATTERNS AND PROBLEMS IN ADMINISTRATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES
• PART 2 FISH AND WILDLIFE RESOURCES EVALUATION
• PART 3 CONCEPTS AND PRACTICES IN FISH AND WILDLIFE ADMINISTRATION
• PART 4 THE NATURAL-RESOURCE AGENCY--ITS PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATION
• PART 5 PEOPLE AND WILDLIFE: PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT IN FISH AND WILDLIFE ADMINISTRATION
• CONCLUSION: MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT--CONVENTIONAL AND INNOVATIVE
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• INDEX