Interorganizational relations in local-use planning
Creators: name: Low, William James
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2010

description: The complexity and turbulence of the twentieth century is reflected in the increasing size and number of government agencies, leading to overlapping responsibilities, competition, and conflict in the field of planning. Multiple jurisdictions with conflicting goals have stimulated the need for productive rather than symbolic interorganizational structures. Local land-use planning is one field where uncoordinated land-use decisions are particularly harmful to the public interest. In Canada, this planning is thought to be controlled by the local government's planning staff under the direction of elected officials. However, this belief ignores the reality of the jurisdictional independence of provincial and federal government agencies. Within a local planning area, these independent agencies are free to use their land to meet their own perceived responsibilities, regardless of local land-use policies. The varied responsibilities and objectives of land-use decision-making organizations have led to interorganizational conflict, incompatible adjacent land uses, ineffective regional plans, and missed opportunities for efficient cooperative planning. It is hypothesized that an interorganizational structure (ios) specifically designed according to theoretically-derived criteria would provide an effective mechanism for reduction of planning conflicts and promotion of cooperative local land-use planning, and would be superior to the existing reliance on ad hoc arrangements. The thesis first examines the contextual relationship between the local planner and one representative independent agency, the Department of National Defence. This is followed by case studies which illustrate both land-use conflicts and cooperative actions currently arising between two DND bases and their neighbouring communities in British Columbia. The thesis next explores the nature of interorganizational relations in terms of group dynamics, social psychology of negotiations, and interorganizational power struggles. This relationships theory is fundamental to understanding the dynamics of an ios. This theoretical understanding of interorganizational relations,, plus the practical, considerations revealed by the case studies, provide the framework for development of ios criteria. The criteria are compared against existing models of interorganizational planning and decision-making to test their validity. These criteria are used to design an ios model for local land-use planning in British Columbia. Finally, the ios model is applied to the case studies using realistic scenarios to determine its effect on interorganizational cooperation. It is shown that the ios would be much more effective at providing both opportunities and reduced risk for cooperation than does the existing situation. Organizations will make use of these opportunities whenever they will benefit from doing so. This will occur more frequently in the ios designed according to theoretically-derived criteria than otherwise. While the ios is designed for a specific situation, the criteria are soundly developed from both theory and the case studies and provide the basis for design of similar mechanisms for land-use planning anywhere in Canada. Furthermore, the understanding gained here contributes to our limited knowledge in the crucial field of interorganizational relations.