First Advisor

Douglas F. Morgan

Term of Graduation

Spring 2024

Date of Publication

6-5-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Public Affairs and Policy

Department

Public Affairs and Policy

Language

English

DOI

10.15760/etd.3767

Physical Description

1 online resource (xi, 433 pages)

Abstract

In 1987, the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) celebrated its 50th year as a federal agency. It was created in 1937 to market power produced by federal dam operations on the Columbia River and provide electric transmission service in the Pacific Northwest region. A decade later, while its organizational mission had largely remained the same, BPA had undergone a major transformation both in its governance role with regional partners and as an institution of the Pacific Northwest. This study seeks to understand how this change occurred.

My research identifies three factors that enabled BPA to successfully respond to external challenges to its mission over the transformative decade of the late 80's and early 90's: governance 'collibration,' agency capability, and executive leadership. Notably, my study examines the use of collibration, which involves mixing and shifting modes of governance (i.e., hierarchical control, market competition, collaborative networks, and community-based solidarity) in response to complex changes in an organization's operating environment. Relying on a longitudinal case study of BPA's annual reports and newspaper media coverage for a decade, my research provides an interpretive analysis of events and actions that explain how the agency transformed itself enabling it to maintain its strong leadership role in the Pacific Northwest region.

BPA's annual reports were the core record set providing data for interpretive analysis of the agency's own narrative of the decade. The annual reports provide a gateway to understanding the operational well-being of BPA as well as changes in agency operations, strategy, and shifts in governance modes. I coded the annual reports using categories of Governance Collibration, Agency Capability, and Executive Leadership. They were further coded for sub-categories to provided additional nuance to understanding BPA's self-narrative and how the agency transformed itself over the decade. The second record set, newspaper accounts and editorials from three major regional newspapers, provided additional evidence of the interaction between BPA and the external network of actors that created the environment within which BPA operated. In some contrast to the use of coding for the Annual Reports, for the newspaper articles and editorials, I relied on identifying the discursive narrative arcs within various newspapers' coverage of BPA issues. As well, I used an iterative approach of reviewing articles/editorials against the coded annual reports both for consistency and for BPA's retrospective of each year versus contemporaneous accounts by newspapers of BPA and other actors.

My findings show a significant change in governance collibration over the decade. In addition, these shifts in governance are closely associated with specific aspects of Agency Capability, such as shifts in strategy and policy. Based on these findings, my coding scheme appears to initially be effective, particularly in identifying the types of Governance Modes used as tools in conjunction with Agency Capability to effect change. Significantly, while BPA's self-narrative for the first half of the decade, raises these narratives as challenges, there is little initial evidence of substantive change to the agency. In contrast, the latter half of the decade, under the leadership of administrator Hardy, shows that the salmon, deregulation, and finance arcs all increased from what might be termed 'challenges' to 'crises.' Utilizing both aspects (i.e., the external influences and BPA narratives, as well as the internal dimensions of governance modes, agency capabilities, and executive actions), provides a rich description of BPA as an agency and a network actor over its transformative decade in facing challenges, responding to multiple crises, and engaging with the full network of stakeholders and actors across the Northwest region. Moreover, the interpretive analysis of BPA narratives (from the annual reports) and media coverage of both BPA and its network actors, identified three narrative arcs that were intertwined with one another to a large extent. These are 1) the salmon stock collapse; 2) increased competition among utilities due to deregulation; and 3) major challenges in BPA's management of its budget, debt, income, and expense at least partially attributable to the first two arcs.

The BPA case study has some important implications for the following bodies of research: governance, organizational theory, and executive leadership. This includes the intersection of each with the others as well as implications for better integrating them through meta-governance as further described below. First, my research shows a viable means of connecting governance and organizational theory by identifying how an agency shifts its modes of governance using the mechanisms of agency capability. As well, my BPA case study elaborates the relative associations between modes of governance and categories of agency capability. As an example, there is a strong connection between the statutory authority capability and the modes of governance available for the agency's use with its network actors. However, within its statutory constraints, BPA emphasized different additional capabilities at different points in time to accomplish its transformation. Thus, analysis using both the lenses of governance and organizational theory provides a more robust understanding of how the agency evolved in a relatively short time period.

Second, the study shows how executive leadership transformed BPA and its approach to governance in the face of major regional attention on multiple crises. My research shows how the administrator's leadership, through factors in both shifting governance modes and changing capabilities, mediated the agency's reaction and response. As a result, given BPA's positionality as a key regional actor, it helps explain the complex interactions among BPA, its federal partners, its customers, and regional stakeholders as the agency navigated the evolving tensions between energy and environmental sector policies.

Taken together, these give rise to a third important and potentially more far-reaching implication: my research offers the opportunity to develop a more robust understanding of the emerging concept of “meta-governance,” a term used by scholars to describe the framework by which governance actors at all levels steer and coordinate actions in complex networks. I believe there is sufficient evidence from my BPA case study to propose a Meta-Governance-In-Action (M-G-I-A) framework as a tool to understand the 'how' of BPA's transformative decade. The M-G-I-A framework seeks to explore the intersection of governance, organizational theory, and executive leadership using meta-governance to better integrate these bodies of literature and provide an analytical tool for understanding complex organizations facing diverse and dynamic operating environments and challenges. In support of the M-G-I-A framework, this research provides an approach for studying collibration, agency change, and executive leadership, as well as examining correlative or causative relationships with external influences on the agency.

Importantly, this work will help bring meta-governance from the abstract into more readily usable models helping to better define, explain, and elaborate meta-governance concepts and theory. For example, many studies of meta-governance focus on the subject agency's interactions within its network of actors. In my research, by integrating shifts in governance modes with changes to agency capabilities, it more clearly shows how BPA used meta-governance to steer and coordinate those interactions and accomplish its objectives. Further, by examining media reporting and particularly the statements, positions, and actions of BPA executives, the study indicates how executive leadership communicates its steering and coordination efforts, thus sending signals to other network actors. Those actors' reactions and response, also shown in media reports, provide a rich description of the complexities of Meta-Governance-In-Action in a real-world setting. Both in academic research and in public administration practice, the implications of this research show the value of meta-governance in addressing the challenges confronting agencies such as BPA in a complex, diverse, and dynamic environment.

Rights

© 2024 Christopher M. Frost

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/42234

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