The Past as Prologue: How the Early Years of the US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution Helped Shape the Program at Age Fifteen

Date01 December 2013
AuthorRobert W. Alexander,Rosemary O'Leary
Published date01 December 2013
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21084
The Past as Prologue: How the Early Years of the US
Institute for Environmental Con ict Resolution
Helped Shape the Program at Age Fifteen
Robert W. Alexander
Rosemary O’leary
is article refl ects empirically on the early history and evolution of the
US Institute for Environmental Confl ict Resolution (USIECR) to ana-
lyze how and why this public entity not only has survived in an ever-
changing political environment but also has succeeded in shaping a
robust environmental confl ict resolution fi eld. e authors use Quinn
and Rohrbaugh’s (1981) competing values framework, as well as theo-
ries about organizational birth and early evolution, as lenses through
which to view this organizational birth and evolution. Project data
derive from sixty interviews carried out in the early years of USIECR,
as well as archival materials, government documents, and participant
observation.  e authors conclude that a balanced approach to strategic
leadership from early planning phases to adolescent reauthorization
resulted in success and set the stage for the accomplishments that USIECR
celebrates on its fi fteenth birthday, an occasion for all government-based
environmental confl ict resolution programs to refl ect on their own stra-
tegic approaches for achieving success.
Environmental confl ict resolution (ECR) in the United States has grown
in importance since its formal beginnings in the early 1970s. Today, for
example, it is not just the US Environmental Protection Agency that houses
specialists in ECR, as was the case in the 1970s (O’Leary and Bingham
2003), but a plethora of public, private, and nonprofi t organizations, includ-
ing the US Department of Interior, the US Department of Transportation,
the Audubon Society, the Policy Consensus Initiative, the Institute for Local
ARTICLES
C R Q, vol. 31, no. 2, Winter 2013 111
© Wiley Periodicals, Inc. and the Association for Confl ict Resolution
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/crq.21084
112 ALEXANDER, O’LEARY
C R Q • DOI: 10.1002/crq
Government, and a variety of state and local government agencies. While
many have contributed to improvements in ECR over the past fi ve decades,
perhaps the largest catalyst for growth was the creation of the US Institute
for Environmental Confl iction Resolution (USIECR) in 1998.
is year marks the fi fteenth anniversary of the USIECR.  is article
refl ects empirically on the early history and evolution of the USIECR to
understand how and why this public entity not only has survived in an
ever-changing political environment but also has succeeded in shaping a
robust ECR fi eld. We use Quinn’s competing values framework (CVF)
(Quinn et al. 2003; Quinn and Rohrbaugh 1981), as well as theories about
organizational birth and early evolution, as lenses through which to view
the USIECR story. To that end, this article explains how early USIECR
leadership balanced competing sociopolitical forces to lay the foundation
for today’s thriving USIECR.
The Start of a New Public Organization
On February 11, 1998, Congress passed Public Law 105–156, the Envi-
ronmental Policy and Confl ict Resolution Act, creating the USIECR, a
new federal organization housed in the Morris K. Udall Foundation, man-
dated “to assist the Federal Government in implementing section 101 of
the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 USC 4331) by provid-
ing assessment, mediation, and other related services to resolve environ-
mental disputes involving agencies and instrumentalities of the United
States.” Although the emergence of a new entity in the federal government
was nothing new, the USIECR faced a statutory requirement not seen in
many other organizations: to work closely with regionally based profession-
als in delivering its services. Kirk Emerson, then a member of the research
faculty at the University of Arizona’s Udall Center for Studies in Public
Policy, was tapped as the fi rst USIECR director. Emerson, with the leader-
ship team of the Udall Foundation, immediately faced many challenges.
How does one start up a new public organization tasked with conven-
ing stakeholders and facilitating confl ict management processes in a politi-
cal system that favors large, insular, hierarchal agencies? According to more
traditional theories of bureaucracy, the answer should be, “You don’t.”  at
is what makes the early years and subsequent growth of USIECR an inter-
esting and important area of investigation.
Research about public organizations indicates that the organizational
birth usually happens suddenly and as the result of calculated political

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