5.2 PRELIMINARY STEPS BEFORE RUNNING QUERY 



Prior to actually running Query, the analyst must take several preliminary 

 steps. First, organizational participants to be included in the analyses must 

 be identified. The goal is to identify all organizations, both private and 

 public, that will actively and directly participate in the decisionmaking 

 process. In selecting organizations for inclusion in the analysis, the analyst 

 should consider those organizations that typically participate in similar 

 issues (e.g.. State and Federal agencies) as well as those having a direct 

 stake in the outcome (e.g., project developers, resource consumers). In 

 addition, organizations with a political stake in the issue should be included; 

 that is, even though an organization may not have a direct interest in one 

 specific outcome over another, it may have a real interest in seeing to it 

 that the issue is decided in a particular manner, and will become involved as 

 a result of that interest. 



The idea is to identify and include all groups that will participate, 

 interact, and have some sort of influence on the outcome. Comprehensiveness 

 is desirable, since the overall analysis will be flawed if significant groups 

 are omitted. This is because groups interact in a negotiation; that is, each 

 group not only behaves in a certain fashion, but also responds to the behavior 

 of other groups as the negotiations proceed. Omitting one significant group 

 may lead an analyst to ignore an important set of stimuli to the intergroup 

 interactions. The set of groups included in the analysis should be all- 

 inclusive — but real i stical ly so. If too many groups are included that do not 

 interact or affect the ultimate outcome, the analytical effort may become too 

 tedious, the information collected overwhelming, and the tactics developed 

 therefrom vague and difficult to pursue. 



Identifying organizational participants can be accomplished in a number 

 of ways. First, a review of the laws surrounding an issue will generally 

 indicate which organizations will enter the conflict, as well as the stage of 

 the process at which they will do so, and in what capacity. Typically, the 

 laws will also reveal which organizations must act — and which ones merely have 

 the opportunity to act. Another way to accomplish this task is through the 

 collective judgement of experts in the field. This technique has been success- 

 fully utilized by other disciplines (Linestone and Turoff 1975; Zuboy 1981). 



The most informal of the "professional committee" approaches is a round- 

 table discussion; these discussions are typically facilitated by a moderator, 

 and although consensus may be difficult to achieve, it is recommended. Scheele 

 (1975) suggests that at least three types of individuals be represented on the 

 committee. Although Scheele was referring to a situation in which diverse 

 groups with differing goals are selected for the purpose of developing habitat 

 suitability criteria, the same principles seem applicable here. 



The first of these types of individuals are those directly involved in 

 the conflict and who have a "stake" in the outcome. The stake may be of a 

 professional or an ideological nature. For example, the supervisor in charge 

 of an organization's technical or field studies may have a professional 

 interest in seeing to it that the group's recommendations are accepted — or at 

 least considered — while another person within the organization may have an 



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