Organizing Science at the
Southern Research Station

Problem Statement

Organizational change is required in the Southern Research Station. It is not a question of whether it will change but is a question of how it will change. Incremental reductions to several RWUs have occurred every year since 2002. These reductions have been driven by a decline in the “purchasing power” of budgets—salaries and fixed costs have risen while funding has remained constant. Units have reduced costs through attrition of personnel and, as a result, the average size of an RWU has declined. Because business processes—e.g., fiscal management, research planning and evaluation, and accomplishment reporting—must be conducted within each RWU, the administrative burden has increased on a per scientist basis.¹ As a result, a decreasing percentage of resources have been dedicated to research.

Declining purchasing power and increasing administrative burdens provide the most immediate impetus for evaluating the Station’s size and organization. But reorganization of any sort needs to start with the question of what structure is best suited for the current and anticipated research mission of the Southern Research Station. The Station’s organization has evolved over time, but its core structure dates to a research model defined in the 1960s when single-disciplinary research centers under powerful center directors gave way to the RWU as the primary organizational entity—with RWUs grouped together under the administration of Assistant Directors, first by State and then by loosely defined cross-cutting themes².

Most recently each Assistant Director was assigned supervision of one or more of the cross-cutting themes and an attempt was made to group RWUs within themes, but research planning and budget remained solidly with the RWUs. Over the years some RWUs have become smaller and more specialized, sometimes with only one or two scientists. At the same time, the cross-cutting themes, while clearly reflecting the uniqueness of the Southern landscape of the mid 1990s, fail to reflect emerging issues such as urbanization and nonnative plant invasions; and deprive us of a common language with which to engage in national priorities.

Compared with the research questions of the past, today’s resource problems increasingly demand research with a broader scope and scale. Fire, global change, and other disturbances are replacing a single species or single forest type as a research focus, while the impacts of development and land parcelization on natural resource sustainability often far exceed the impacts of all forest management options. These research problems require insights from multiple disciplines and therefore a more highly integrated research program. The Forest Service Strategic Plan and the Research & Development Strategic Program Areas³ (SPAs) also anticipate this kind of integration within and among Stations in the Forest Service. Organizational structure determines, to a large degree, the extent to which integrated research can be accomplished.

Summary Problem Statement: The Southern Research Station needs to develop an organizational model that is highly efficient—i.e., it is able to maximize scientific efforts given budgets, business processes, and external environments—is highly effective—i.e., it is able to define the best questions and deploy resources to answer them in a timely fashion—and has the flexibility to adapt to changing conditions in the future.

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¹ We also forecast (1) an increase in administrative burden per unit due to ongoing Business Operations Transformation that pushes administrative duties to the field, and (2) a further decline in the number of scientists due to flat or declining budgets. Administrative burden per scientist is therefore projected to increase within the existing structure.

² Original cross-cutting themes were Southern Appalachian Ecosystem Research and Sustainability; Sustainability and Productivity of the Interior Highlands Ecosystem; Sustainability and Productivity of Southern Pine Ecosystems; Ecology and Management of Forested Wetlands, Bottomland Hardwoods, and Riparian Zones; Landscape and Regional Integrated Assessment and Modeling; Inventory and Modeling.

³ The Research & Development Strategic Program Areas are fire, invasive species, air & water, resource management & use, fish & wildlife, outdoor recreation, resource data & analysis, and strategic opportunities.