Leadership and decision making: William R. Ruckelshaus and the Environmental Protection Agency.

This paper applies case study methodology to analyze secondary data on the two-term EPA administrator, W.R. Ruckelshaus. The paper has two objectives.. The first objective is to examine the plausibility of the proposition that leadership of real world organizations has three defining characteristics: the setting of a strategic direction or vision, concern with changing the status quo, and the energizing of others to act by swaying their expectations, aspirations, and commitments. The second objective of the paper is to demonstrate the utility of a five-component framework of leadership decision making developed by Lipshitz and Mann (2004) for studying the relatively neglected subject of the leadership process. The paper is divided into three sections. The first two sections deal with Ruckelshaus' first and second terms as EPA administrator and consist of a brief outline of the terms' history, a description of an illustrative key decision and analysis. The concluding section discusses the utility of studying leadership from a decision making perspective. The case shows that Ruckelshaus is clearly concerned with all three issues delineated by the proposed defining characteristics.. In addition it shows that using the Lipshitz and Mann (2004) framework can generate a detailed description of the actions and differential concerns of specific leaders, highlight distinctions between different leaders, and track how the leadership of a single leader under different circumstances. Finally, it indicates that conceptualizing leadership as an influence relationship between a leader and his followers should be expanded to include a wider community of internal and external stakeholders and a wider set of "managerial" functions.

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Leadership is one of the most widely researched phenomena in the social sciences. Nevertheless, researchers of leadership have failed to agree on a single definition or the precise nature of this phenomenon. Indeed, "leadership ... has come to mean all things to all people. Scholars and practitioners ... are no more sure of what leadership is in 1990 than they were in 1930" (Rost, 1991, p. 7). Rost went on to identify motivating of followers as the defining characteristic of the leadership process: "Influence is probably the word most often used in the leadership definitions of the 1980s ... transcending several conceptual frameworks of leadership" (Rost, 1991, p. 79, italics in the original). Our own review of the literature (Lipshitz & Mann, 2004) revealed three recurring themes which we propose as the defining characteristics of leadership: The setting of a strategic direction or vision, concern with changing the status quo, and the energizing of others to act by swaying their expectations, aspirations, and commitments (Rost's original focus). To the extent that the literature provides a comprehensive, valid description of leadership, persons who satisfy these criteria are bona fide leaders, as distinct from persons in leadership positions (e.g., presidents and chief executives) who may, or may not be true leaders.

Our paper is based on the assumption that leadership is what leaders do; namely, that the best way to understand the nature of leadership is to study bona fide leaders in action. The paper has two objectives. The first objective is to examine the plausibility of the above proposition through a case study of the two-term EPA administrator, W.R. Ruckelshaus. That Ruckelshaus was a true leader has been noted before. According to Dobel (1992, 1995), he was an exemplary public leader who "steer[ed] the EPA on an independent course despite the political divisions prevailing in Washington DC" (1995, p. 488) owing to a "rare combination of the thoughtful prudence of a skilled politician and the courage of a person of integrity" (1992, p. 243). Similarly, Heifetz (1994) referred to Ruckelshaus as an example of his model of leading adaptive changes.

The second objective of this paper is to demonstrate the utility of a five-component framework of the leadership decision making task structure developed by Lipshitz and Mann (2004) for studying the relatively neglected subject of the leadership process (Yukl, 1999; Shamir, Zakay, Breinin, & Popper, 1998). Thus, our paper complements previous analyses of the leadership of Ruckelshaus (noted above) by focusing on his decision making.

The paper is divided into three sections. The first two sections deal with Ruckelshaus' first and second terms as EPA administrator and consist of a brief chronology of each term and an analysis of a key decision in each of them. The concluding section discusses the utility of studying leadership from a decision making perspective.

First Term (1970-1973)

Chronology (1)

Ruckelshaus was appointed to head the newly formed EPA by President Nixon who, though indifferent to environmental issues, wished to satisfy growing public concerns over them. The new agency was staffed by 5743 employees assembled from 15 existing federal agencies. Predictably this produced severe identity and orientation problems (Wiehl, 1974), confronting Ruckelshaus with a series of challenges: organizing the agency; determining its mission and setting "some clear goals that everybody could identify with" (quoted in Wiehl, 1974, p. 5); establishing the EPA's credibility; and "demonstrating the willingness of the central government, and the political process, to respond to the legitimate demands of the people" (EPA Oral History, 1993) (2).

Organizing the Agency

Concentrating on the agency's mission, Ruckelshaus delegated the challenge of organizing it to his deputy Bob Fri. This division of labor was continued later on when Ruckelshaus focused on maintaining the EPA's relationships with the White House and Congress, leaving Fri to run its day-to-day operations. The only aspect of organizing in which Ruckelshaus did take active interest was the selection of his top management team. He insisted on professional excellence as the overriding criterion, an emphasis which he maintained throughout both tenures (EPA Oral History, 1993).

Determining a Mission

After extensive consultation within the agency, Ruckelshaus defined the EPA's mission as "pollution abatement". The advantage of this mission was that it was "fairly narrow, in the environmental sense, but nevertheless identifiable enough, understandable enough, to let us know what we were doing, so that we could move towards the goal" (quoted in Wiehl, 1974, p. 5).

Establishing Credibility

Ruckelshaus considered the EPA's credibility as essential for its effectiveness because public support was the agency's only independent power base: "The EPA would never have been established had it not been for public demand.... Public support remains absolutely essential for anything to be done on behalf of the environment.... Absent some countervailing public pressure for the environment nothing much will happen" (EPA Oral History, 1993).

To establish the agency's credibility as quickly as possible among its key constituencies--the public, potential offenders, and Congress--Ruckelshaus decided to "hit the ground running" by moving to prosecute powerful offenders as the very first act of the fledgling agency (see illustrative decision below). To maintain the agency's credibility later on, he continued to challenge powerful adversaries such as the auto industry (Quarles, 1976, p. 188), and personally attended to the EPA's relationships with Congress and the White House:

"I spent a lot of time with [representative Jamie Whitten, who] had responsibility over our appropriations ... before I'd make a decision that had any effect on something he thought was important.... Often, the decision was contrary to what he thought should be done. However, if you stayed in touch with him, communicated with him, and tried to accommodate his interest, it would normally be all right (EPA Oral History, 1993).

Reflecting on his first tenure some thirty years later, Ruckelshaus suggested that he was "beginning to make progress on some of the larger environmental issues like air pollution and water pollution, and setting in place some permit programs for water and air. I think these were necessary...." (EPA Oral History, 1993). This progress was achieved through a series of decisions regarding the setting of standards and prosecution of offenders. These decisions were truly distributed, rather than Ruckelshaus' individual decisions:

In the course of his travels, [EPA staffer] Murray Stein had learned where all the worst water pollution problems were, and when Bill Ruckelshaus wanted to move out with an aggressive enforcement program, Murray could tell him where to begin. (Quarles, 1976, p. 174)

A remarkable feature of Ruckelshaus' first term, as reflected by the available records, was the absence of decisions that were directly concerned with motivating his subordinates. Rather, it was the substance of the decisions, and their successful outcomes in particular, which did the job:

Three months after EPA was created, Ruckelshaus summoned the regional directors of the water pollution program to Washington and told them to push ahead aggressively with enforcement cases. When the months that followed produced little action, I was puzzled. Slowly I realized that the biggest factor in the delay was simply the ingrained attitude of most employees in the agency.... They felt inhibited by the opposition of their state agency counterparts, who resented the intrusion of federal officials (Quarles, 1976, p. 47).

This attitude changed following EPA's successful action in Birmingham Alabama, which was conducted without Ruckelshaus' involvement.