Downsizing Big Science: Strategic Choices

Abstract

In good times, management mistakes can often be ignored. But in times of cutback, tough choices must be made over priorities and mistakes are more obvious. It is much more challenging to manage in cutback times because few decisions are win-win situations. Many are zero-sum, with one unit of the organization benefitting at the expense of another. Alternatively, across-the-board cuts that hurt everyone equally please no one in particular. It is hard for leaders to look good in cutback times, even though their skills are most crucial at these moments (Doig and Hargrove, 1987). Some theorists minimize leadership's capacity to make much difference, and suggest chance as determinative (Kaufman, 1985). Administrative theory suggests how various agencies cope (Daniels, 1997; Downs, 1967; Kaufman, 1976; Lambright and Sapolsky, 1976; Levine, 1978). Basic strategies seem to fall into three categories. One is resistance. It calls for the agency to stand up to adversaries, dig in its heels, mobilize the constituency, and fight. The second category is mitigation. Here, the leaders anticipate cutback, plan for it, and attempt to control damage through adaptation. This strategy attempts to keep one step ahead of cutback forces. Like the resistance strategy, it is proactive, but it is more subtle and recognizes a certain inevitability in cutbacks. The third is a combination of mitigation and resistance, a mixed strategy that is most viable only after mitigation has been demonstrated successfully through an adaptation of the agency to the cutback environment. The political power dimension of cutback management is often overriding. When resources are scarce, struggle takes place within an agency and among agencies to see what will prevail. Also, the forces behind cutbacks may not be only budgetary foes. They may be ideological adversaries, who target specific agencies or programs they view as harboring values they oppose. Cutback eras are opportunities to kill particular programs. The rhetoric may come in the language of administrative efficiency--streamlining, reinvention, and reorganizing. Behind the rhetoric are often political interests, with success and failure a function of the political skills of administrators. This article develops these concepts of strategic choice in downsizing through an in-depth discussion of one NASA case, followed by a brief examination of two other Big Science endeavors, one from NASA the other from the Department of Energy. As will be noted, strategic choices can evolve as administrative leaders deal with a shifting environment and learn. Outright resistance may be occasionally effective in normal times where the agency has unusual bureaucratic power; but cutback eras feature macropolicies of long-term constraint and agencies resist at their peril. Overt resistance can hurt an agency and program, whereas mitigation and a skillful mix of mitigation and resistance can lead to a measure of stability. NASA's Mission to Planet Earth In the 1980s a small band of bureaucratic advocates sold NASA on a major new program of earth observations called, until recently, Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE), the centerpiece of which was a set of large highly advanced satellites called the Earth Observation System (EOS) (Lambright, 1994). Mission to Planet Earth is now known as the Earth Science Enterprise, but this article uses the older, better known name. Anxious to strike an international leadership stance with respect to the emerging global warming issue, newly elected President George Bush decided in 1989 to sharply augment spending for global environmental research. The Earth Observation System, largest component of Mission to Planet Earth, was raised to the level of a presidential priority (Bromley, 1994). In July, marking the 20th anniversary of the moon landing, President Bush publicly gave his blessing to NASA's newest mission--Planet Earth--and its lead effort, the Earth Observation System (Sawyer, 1989). …