Strawman/Papers

DRAFT 9/1/97
An Inventory of Northeastern Regional Institutional Capacity

A Concept Paper
David R. MacKenzie
Executive Director
NERA
September 1997

An Inventory of Northeast Regional Institutional Capacity- a Concept Paper

Introduction

The Northeastern delegates of the Council on Agricultural Research, Extension and Teaching (CARET) have requested information on the capacity of the Land-grant Universities (including the Connecticut Experiment Station at New Haven) to conduct agricultural (broadly defined) teaching, research and extension. This calls for an inventory of capacity in a time of enormous change, including: greater institutional accountability for public funding; dramatic changes in institutional responsibilities; and on-going individual institutional efforts to document the social, economic and environmental benefits of programs.

In response to the CARET request a Northeast Regional Capacity Inventory Committee was formed with co-chairs Daryl Lund and John Nye and with members David MacKenzie, Trish Manfredi, Dean Sutphin and Jan Olsen (Advisor). The committee initiated activities with some preliminary decisions regarding approaches to their charge.

The committee has made assignments to initiate its planning process. These include:

There is a general consensus on the perceived need to conduct an inventory of capacity but no clear consensus on what is needed. The committee has made a decision to proceed with the charge but it is generally recognized that some strategies will need to be developed for getting the job done.

Background

A number of institutions in the Northeastern region are conducting capacity inventories but none of these activities are coordinated inter-institutionally. Moreover, the Experiment Station Committee on Organization and Policy (ESCOP), the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy (ECOP) and the Academic Programs section are conducting strategic planning activities that rely on an understanding of capacities that are to be matched to priorities and goals. Additionally, the USDA is looking at the GPRA implementation and the Congressionally mandated REEIS, both of which need information about institutional capacity, regionally and nationally.

It seems impractical to attempt to dynamically measure all the Northeast Land-Grant Universities’ institutional capacities. To attempt such a task would require methodologies that do not exist, and significant resources for the maintenance of the information, if the initial investment is to be justified.

There is however, a strong need for some indicators of institutional capacity for several applications including advocacy programs, institutional management decisions, and for regional and national accountability. The focus should be on what is useful, doable and affordable.

The benefits of documenting regional capacities relate to improved institutional and regional planning and better resource allocation decision. There is also the possibility of greater program efficiency and through the identification of useful collaborations. Measurements of institutional capacity could also be useful for student and faculty recruitment. Finally, institutional capacity measures are necessary for accountability programs.

Fundamental Concepts

There is no existing conceptual framework that could be used for measuring institutional capacity. There are however some concepts that can be drawn from the private sector that could be useful for conceptualizing strategies for measuring regional institutional capacity. These concepts are: core competencies and strategic architecture.

These terms, which are related to institutional capacity, are defined as:

Emerging from the post-Cold War era of science is the commonly referenced model for accountability which measures the conversion of inputs to outputs at some given rate as:

Input---rate--->Output

This rate of conversion (r) can be taken as one measure of institutional capacity. There are however some drawbacks to using this approach that can be demonstrated in the following table:

Table 1. Net Present Value U.S. Potato Breeding Programs (millions of US $) and Internal Rates of Return (%)
USDA Cooperative Program $42m 23%
North Dakota $ 39m 46%
Wisconsin $ 6m 25%
Louisiana $ 4m 18%
Nebraska $ 1m 17%
Minnesota $0.5m 13%
New York $ -1m (-)%
Calculated for the 20th century

This analysis (conducted by Tom Walker, Senior Agricultural Economist at the International Potato Center) shows the calculated net present value of potato breeding program in the United States during this century. Considerable differences are obvious in the net present value and the rates of return on those investments.

USDA Cooperative Breeding Program was studied by Walker in some detail during the period 1931 to 1980. The USDA Cooperative Breeding Program works with Land-Grant Universities in collaborations to develop varieties. The collaboration was not working well during the 1950s and 60s (see Table 2), but was reactivated under the leadership of ARS scientist Raymond Webb during the 1970s. The result of Webb’s efforts was a major turnaround in the USDA cooperative potato breeding program’s net present value. Under Webb’s partnership with several Land-Grant Universities a number of valuable potato varieties were produced.

Table 2. USDA Cooperative Potato Breeding Program’s Net Present Value in millions of US dollars
(5 yr. intervals; 0.12 dis. rate)
1931-35$ 35m
1936-40$ 7m
1941-45no data
1946-50$ 16m
1951-55$ 10m
1956-60$ -2m
1961-65$ -3m
1966-70$ -3m
1971-75$ -1m
1976-80$ 24m

These numerics get directly into the question of how to measure institutional capacity. The question is.....Are the Net Present Value and the Rate of Conversion of inputs to outputs better than some other capacity measures, such as scientist years, number of courses or workshops offered, dollars spent, or square feet of facilities. The Rates of Conversion or the Net Present Value calculations may be indicative of successful program management strategies, but the measures tend to be (at least in the case of potato breeding programs) directly related to the strength of the program’s leadership.

Unfortunately, we do not know much about these types of indicators for measuring institutional capacity, and thus some caution in this analytical approach is necessary and strongly advised.

Expectations for Congruence

Another consideration when using an analytical approach to measuring institutional capacity is the general expectation for congruence (agreement) between resource allocations (inputs) and potential benefits (outcome). It is well recognized that some degree of congruence is important for both institutional decision making and accountability. But attempting to obtain too much congruence may reduce program risk-taking, and may stifle innovation.

It is also difficult to be able interpret congruency expectations. Consider Table 3 where a disparity seems to exist in investments in potato research in South America. Certainly the investments in Paraguay seem incongruent.

Table 3. Public Sector Expenditures for Potato Research in Some Selected South American Countries
(in US dollars per metric ton).
Brazil$ 0.08/ton
Chile$ 0.26/ton
Argentina$ 0.35/ton
Uruguay$ 0.64/ton
Paraguay$ 41.15/ton

However, given the information in Table 4, is one of the US regions incongruent with the others, or will these investments eventually be justified?

Table 4. Public Sector Expenditures for Potato Research in the United States, by Region
(in US dollars per metric ton).
U.S. Central Region$ 4.12/ton
U.S. Western Region$ 1.45/ton
U.S. Eastern Region$ 2.80/ton

If quantitative approaches to measuring institutional and regional capacities seem to be beyond our reach, what other approaches may be used?

A Proposal

No institution can today expect to be all things to all people. Most of our Region’s institutions are focussing on what they can do best in program areas that are built on recognized capacities. These are in turn reflected in core competencies. These core competencies are then supplemented through external strategic partnerships, made within both the public and private sectors.

An opinion survey of institutions asking for a declaration of core competencies could be used to gather information about institutional capacities. Examples of core competencies are:

The conceptual approach here would be to ask institutions to declare, in their best judgements, their institutional capacities in a number of core competency areas. This survey approach would require the development of a taxonomy of core competencies that could be scored by institutional leaders, using their best judgement. Core competencies could be developed through indexing the CRIS system, or Oregon Invest, or simply brain storming by the committee members themselves. A simple numeric scale could be used to allow the respondents for each of the regions’ institutions to quickly score their responses.

Reporting the Results

In the business world core competencies are strategically built by aggregating capacities to give themselves a business advantage. In comparison, public institutions can and do strategically aggregate their capacities into core competencies. The advantages of doing this for public institutions are in the leveraging of strengths and the building of reputations which can lead to further strengthening. Additionally, core competencies allows for the integration of functions in identified areas, so that through the building of collaborations institutions can become even stronger through the promotion of multi-disciplinary teams in areas of core competency.

As defined above, strategic architectures are built by through the structuring of core competencies in a way to secure institutions’ future leadership. Some examples of strategic architectures are:

Note that each of these strategic architectures bring together core competencies (which are in turn built on institutional capacities) in multi-disciplinary programs.

The benefits of having a strategic architecture within an institution and within a region are:

The hierarchical relationships between these concepts are shown in Figure 1.

Strategic Architecture
Core Competencies
Institutional Capacities

Figure 1. Hierarchical Relationships

Proposed Activities

It is proposed that the Northeast Regional Capacity Inventory Committee develop a survey instrument to allow the region’s institutions to identify their core competencies and describe their strategic architectures. This will allow the committee to plot the region’s strengths in major program areas, and qualitatively describe to our advocates how we perceive our strengths in teaching, research and extension. The information would also be useful for identifying regional capacity gaps that could be filled through strategic partnerships, through regional planning. The survey instrument could ask for volunteered information on institutional capacities that contribute to core competencies in ways that will assist in the analysis. This will allow the committee to conduct a region-wide study of strengths and regional opportunities expressed through a regional plan to be presented to a future NE Joint Session for broader consideration.

Adoption of this proposal would only be an interim action, awaiting the emergence of the intended REE Information System and the CSREES/GPRA implementation process. Both of these activities are two years or more into the future, and each may offer more quantitative information on institutional capacity than our region can expect to sustain on its own. This proposed interim survey would provide CARET with their requested information without being a major burden on the member institutions. This would be done while bridging us to the anticipated future quantitative information resources intended by the nationally organized relational databases.

Comments and suggestions are invited.

David R. MacKenzie September 1997