Organizing Science at the
Southern Research Station

Introduction

The Southern Research Station has played a central role in the restoration and recovery of forested landscapes in the U.S. South through a long-standing and broad-based research program focused on the many challenges of sustaining natural resources. It is recognized as a world leader in forest research. The capacity of the Southern Research Station to continue its productive history is now challenged by many of the forces faced by many other public research institutions in the United States including declining budgets, the changing nature of important research questions, and shifts in customers and their expectations for research products. These changes suggest that the current organizational model may not be best suited for addressing the questions at hand. Budget issues alone indicate that it cannot be sustained in its present form. The objective of this document is to recommend an organizational model that prepares the Station to address today’s questions with current budgets and positions the Station for research leadership well into the future.

An organization is more than an organizational chart. At one level, it can be defined by units composed of people (Research Work Units or RWUs), linkages among these units (authorities), processes for planning and conducting business, and its physical infrastructure (locations, experimental forests, and equipment). This document addresses the definition of units, their linkages, and to a certain extent, planning and business processes. It takes the current physical infrastructure as a given, with the expectation that a new organization would evolve its infrastructure to best support research.

In addition to the technical definition of the organization described above, organizations also develop informal structures and networks. In the case of the Station, RWUs serve as hubs in networks of university cooperators and other internal and external partners. They serve as communication portals for many research customers. Any change to this long-standing formal organization will have impacts on the informal network that has been crucial for supporting the research mission and accomplishing goals. We have attempted to understand and provide continuity of these networks in designing new organizational models.

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