Estrategia

In 2001 AgResearch was an organisation of 921 employees, of whom 281 had a PhD qualification. In 2000 these figures were 897 and 279 respectively (AgResearch Annual Report 2001). At its establishment in 1992 there were 1109 employees.

Approximately two thirds of these employees were scientific workers and the rest were in support services, human resources, information technology and so on.

A Board of Directors appointed by the shareholding Ministers of the Crown provides the corporate governance of the organisation. The CEO is responsible to this Board. He41 is supported by a corporate of senior management employees including the Human Resources Advisor, Marketing, Science and Technology Manager, Chief Financial Officer, Company Secretary, Information Technology Manager. (See Figure 3.1.) The Support Services include the Personal Assistants (PAs),

receptionists, farm staff and accountants. Then there is AgResearch Science, which has a triumvirate of general managers, only one of whom represents science on senior management level committees. At the next level there are ten Science Platforms, each with a SPL, who has responsibility for the management of all workers in the several science groups in each Platform, with Human Resource responsibilities also. Each of these Platforms has fifty to seventy workers. The ways in which the Platforms and the groups are managed is very dependent on the style of each manager. The organisation also includes the product development company Celentis, which has a minimal number of staff who are mainly business managers, each with responsibility for business developments arising from several Platforms. It is difficult to explain the structure within each Platform because they are organised around science programme objectives which may have overlapping personnel. In 2001 FRST instituted larger programmes and now each Platform usually has one large FRST programme and many smaller commercial programmes. Staff forming a group may have an informal name but it may not be organisationally recognised. Each worker is responsible to a line manager, and line managers may be responsible for one or more workers. For example, in the Wool and Skin Biology Group, there was one scientist in charge (who was responsible to the SPL), but he was responsible for three scientists and two research associates. Two of the scientists were not

responsible for any other workers but the other one was responsible for another two research associates. The programme leader may be the SPL, but not necessarily,

Figure 4.1 AgResearch’s organisational structure 42 * See Figure 4.2 for further explication of a Platform structure

Board of Directors

Corporate

Human Resources Marketing

Science and Technology Chief Financial Officer Company Secretary Information technology Support Services GM National Administration Farms Celentis GM Product Development GM Strategic Business Managers

AgResearch Science General Managers (3) Platforms AgSystems* Animal Genomics Animal Health

Biocontrol and Biodiversity Food Science

Food Systems and Technology Land and Environmental

Management

Nutrition and Behaviour Plant Breeding and Genomics Reproductive Technologies Information Technology Service Statistics and Bioinformatics Group CEO

42 _{This is a reconstruction of the ‘official’ structural diagram taken off the intranet in 2000. Note that though two thirds of the workers in AgResearch are in AgResearch}

because he may have devolved this responsibility to someone else. Figure 4.2 illustrates the complex nature of the Platform structure using the AgSystems Platform as an example. The Wool and Skin Biology Group is hidden within the ‘Animal Fibres’ and ‘Skins and Leather’ part of the Platform’s programme.

Farm systems experiments

• Technology integration into farm systems

• On-farm control of meat attributes

• Deer farming systems

• Animal fibres

• Skins and leather Farm systems models

Mathematical models • Supply chain modelling • Farm systems modelling • Farmer decision tools • Environmental modelling • Quantitative risk modelling • Biological modelling • Complex systems AgSystems Platform (led by SPL) Social systems • Learning packages • Readiness for change • Adult learning • Organisational performance

Note: The arrows demonstrate staff linkages.

Figure 4.2 An example of a Platform structure: AgSystems

Groups in AgResearch are not management-directed as such. They have tended to grow simply because their leaders have been able to gain more research funding. Group leaders have often risen to the leadership position through automatic

promotion rather than through an appointment process. Such progression is taken as a natural part of being a scientist. Rae, for example, described how she gradually increased her responsibilities through her boss passing on more work and through her own initiatives. This makes AgResearch a different work scene from the teams and groups described in the management literature in which management sets up teams.

In AgResearch there is a much greater sense of autonomy already present as part of a group’s evolution. (This situation may well alter as the distribution of funding

becomes more organisationally focused, moving to a more bulk funded system under greater organisational control, rather than FRST focused.)

AgResearch workers are spread over five major campuses: Ruakura in Hamilton, Grasslands in Palmerston North, Wallaceville, Lincoln, and Invermay, out of

Dunedin. Staff in a Platform may be spread over several campuses. AgResearch also owns and operates various research farms, some on campus sites and others further afield, such as the farm at Winchmore in Mid-Canterbury and the high country station at Tara Hills near Omarama. Some staff work within a nearby university in order to have more interaction and collaboration with university colleagues. An example is the Soil Science Group based at Lincoln University.

AgResearch set up a product development company, Celentis, in the year 2000. In a sense this supports Government policy with its emphasis on using knowledge to bolster New Zealand’s economy. Celentis was set up as a separate company because as such it was more likely to gain venture capital from overseas sources than it would if its link to AgResearch was more obvious.43 However, it was also its stated

intention that within the foreseeable future it would provide independent funding from its profits to invest in more research in AgResearch, i.e., AgResearch would become a client of Celentis. This would enable AgResearch to be less dependent on Government funding. (Remembering that AgResearch was set up to serve the pastoral agriculture sector as part of the restructuring of the public funding of science, the existence of Celentis indicates the ambivalence of Government policy.) This section described AgResearch, the place in which this research was carried out. In the next section I drop a level to describe the particular science groups I chose to access the ‘ordinary’ scientific workers in the organisation.

43 _{One of the Government responses to the lack of venture capital in New Zealand has been to set up a} capital venture fund by taking money from the reserves of the profitable CRIs. As AgResearch had already earmarked this money as its own venture capital in Celentis it was very upset and made strong representations to the Minister of Science Research and Technology. The fund has still gone ahead (2001 budget) with the appointment of a manager (Royal Society Alert 194, 20 Sept. 2001). It was a very tidy way for the Government to provide some venture capital with no cost to the taxpayer, as Jenny Shipley, Leader of the Opposition, lost no time in pointing out!