True Green: Executive Effectiveness in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Drawing on the careers of senior executives of the US Environmental Protection Agency, True Green identifies the concrete actions that work in protecting our nation’s environment. By examining the exquisitely difficult tasks of executive leadership in environmental protection, one of the most conflicted public issues of today, these scholars provide lessons of executive effectiveness in the principal government institution essential to national environmental progress. The EPA shoulders great expectations from the public and political leaders on fulfilling its statutorily assigned activities. As a result, EPA must act in concert with state and local governments, nongovernment organizations and interest groups, as well as business and industry. This volume also highlights the career civil servants who bridge across from policymakers to the government bureaucrats who must make real the abstract policy choices of politicians. True Green uses the experiences of the individual contributors to provide a deeper understanding of the practices associated with effective executive behavior in the Environmental Protection Agency.

Table of Contents:
Preface Lee M. Thomas Introduction Chapter 1: Call and Response: The Senior Executive Service Thomas Kelly Chapter 2: Managing the Conventional Path: Air Quality Planning and Management Gerald Andrews Emison Chapter 3: The Challenges of Pesticide Regulation: Reconciling Past Decisions While Forging a Better Future Susan Wayland Chapter 4: Leading at the Intergovernmental Boundary: EPA’s Regional Offices A. Stanley Meiburg Chapter 5: Transitioning from the Conventional Path: Water Quality and Wetlands/Watersheds Robert Wayland Chapter 6: Protection Without Command-And-Control Systems: The Underground Storage Tanks System Ronald Brand Chapter 7: Protection in a Non-Regulated World: The Indoor Air Program Thomas Kelly Chapter 8: Formal systems for Planning and Managing National Environmental Protection David Ziegele Chapter 9: Lessons for Leadership in Environmental Management John C. Morris and Gerald Andrews Emison

About the Author :
Gerald Andrews Emison is a Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at Mississippi State University. John Charles Morris is a Professor of Public Policy and serves as the Ph.D. Graduate Program Director in the Department of Urban Studies and Public Administration, at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

Review :
In this well-conceived volume, Jerry Emison and John Morris gather together scholars and practitioners to explore the challenges of executive leadership of the nation’s premier environmental institution. Their studies reveal lessons from environmental leadership that are broadly applicable to public and private firms confronting complex problems: success requires a willingness to experiment, while embracing consistently-applied simple core principles, including a dedication to the ideals that shape the organization’s mission. This book needs to rest on the desk of every senior executive in the public service. Finally, a book that meaningfully covers—removed from polemics and political acrimony—the work of the U.S.’s 'Green team,' the senior executives and managers of the Environmental Protection Agency. A balanced and thoroughly informative work covering one of the U.S.’s most politically charged agencies, the EPA. In the 42 years since the Environmental Protection Agency was created, its executives have found their job an endless challenge. Pressured from many directions, EPA units have had to learn to collaborate with state and local governments, businesses large and small, environmental interest groups, and other parts of the federal establishment. That they navigated that challenge with considerable success is evident in eight contributions from former senior executives reflecting on their experience. Editors Emison (Mississippi State Univ.), an EPA veteran, and Morris (public policy, Old Dominion Univ.) draw a clear set of lessons in a concluding chapter on how to lead in a complex political and administrative web that demands at the same time commitment, innovation, and pragmatism. Executive leadership in many areas of government requires specific skills such as planning, resource management, and political negotiation, combined with an inner sense of when and how to apply them. Lacking any well-marked path to follow, the executives portrayed here had to learn by doing and in hindsight accomplished much of what they set out to do. These are valuable insights for students and practitioners in public administration and environmental management. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections.