PERSPECTIVE
5.5 EVOLVING PERCEPTIONS OF STRATEGY CONCEPTS
5.5.3 Competencies
later to affect the organization's chances of success and ability to adapt. Curbing opposition may have been appropriate at one stage, but it was not necessarily going to be correct for all time. For example, artefacts such as, uniforms, firearms and the social distance that conservation staff kept from communities that initially supported the fight against this opposition were later to stand in the way of seeking to form alliances with communities. The fact that the mission expanded to incorporate tourism and recreation as well as community participation (and general openness to other stakeholders) meant that while these artefacts still had a role in the enforcement function, their usage and visibility needed careful consideration when it came to the implementation of the recreation and tourism programmes.
mission of protecting wildlife. Clearly, there were efforts initially by the politicians who facilitated the hiring of Vincent, and later by Vincent himself to ensure a close coupling between the kinds of skills that people he hired possessed and the nature of the environment in which they were to operate. In particular, the appointment of Vincent was deliberate - to involve someone with some aggression to get conservation off the ground (Vincent 1989). It was equally not strange that Vincent hired a sizeable number of ex- World War II combatants as his field rangers. A military background was necessary for dealing with the enforcement component which even involved use of firearms. Physical stamina was critical for surviving the harsh and physically demanding conditions in the wild where the protected areas were located.
The next collective of skills came in the form of scientists whose hiring Vincent initiated in response to an 'organizational need' directly relevant to the NPB mission: inadequate scientific knowledge and skills to inform management actions (Vincent 1989). Arguably, if it were not for this connection to the mission, it is unlikely that the search for additional competencies and let alone identification of scientists would have even been considered.
Moreover, scientists were received with mixed feelings by the 'old guard' namely the rangers and those in management who strongly identified with the initial mission and the emphasis on protection and the centrality of enforcement related skills (Potter pers.
comm.). However, scientific skills began to make undeniable contributions to the mission of conservation and were in due course accepted as their work gained profile and produced positive results through contributing to the agency's management skills and policies (Hughes 2001).
Another major wave of changes was related to the growing public interest in recreation and tourism in the late 1960s and for most of the 1970s. Consequently under Geddes- Page, a need arose for skills in promoting recreation and tourism. Although tourism was being promoted under Vincent, it did not receive as much attention as it did under Geddes-Page. Creation of a directorate headed by an executive member of the organization, appointments of middle and senior management as well as the provision of a growing budget helped to raise the profile of tourism in the organization but only to the
concern of those who saw the mission of the NPB as only conservation. Moreover, recreation and tourism were for many years not run professionally, and the common trend was basically to acquire staff within the organization to perform the tourism and recreation related jobs (Frandsen pers. comm.).
Under Hughes, two sets of extra competencies were needed. One was in response to the need to 'professionalize' the tourism and recreation function. This was translated into a need for expertise in business management and related skills that would help the NPB run its recreation and tourism functions effectively and efficiently. Moreover, tourism as a fast-growing industry was increasingly becoming competitive. Surviving this competition entailed more than just being custodians of a large wildlife estate, but also being able to provide quality services in the tourism and recreation facet. More broadly, the need for such expertise was also driven by the fact that the NPB's finances were negatively transformed in the late 1980s. This came against a backdrop of decades of regular real rises in income and growth in costs of conservation in terms of operations, salaries, scientific services and equipment.
The second set of extra competencies was as a result of a 'paradigm shift' in the conservation sector, and more specifically how it transformed relations with local communities and other stakeholders. The new approach entailed engaging local communities and working with them in ways that created constituencies for the support for conservation beyond the previous conservation agency and protected area borders.
Given that the NPB had a history of having almost nothing to do with the local communities, with an autocratic approach, and generally a lack of communication with local communities, a big weakness was exposed for skills in working with local communities - especially the black communities. This transition was not easy because it came at a time when enforcement and 'professionalized science' had bonded strongly as core-competencies for the promotion of conservation. After 1994, the need to work with local communities was in line with the democratic dispensation and it was only a matter
At the time of the interviews, Dave Frandsen was the Director of Ecotourism and Marketing at EKZNW.
of time before the imperative of working with communities was provided for in both national and provincial legislation.