Relationships between qualifications of a forest district manager and economic conditions on the one hand and the operating result of a forest district on the other
The generally accepted opinion that professional qualifications of forest district managers are essential for the economic success of forest districts was studied taking as a basis the administrative division of the State Forests National Forest Holding (NFH) in Poland. The applied economic success indicators were: financial result excluding allocations from the Forest Fund and other operating revenues, and without other operating costs per hectare of the total area of a forest district, and administration costs per hectare of the total area of a forest district. Qualifications of forest district managers were assessed on the basis of their educational record, additional training after learning a degree and job seniority. All forest districts were studied, taking into consideration their division into three geographic zones, area of forest districts, and difficulty level of their management, as well as the administrative division of the State Forests NFH. Then, selected model groups were studied, considering results of regular comprehensive inspections carried out by the State Forests Inspection.
The findings of study on the correlation between selected economic parameters characterizing forest resource management in forest districts and selected numerous formal qualifications of forest districts managers, with application of statistical methods, showed that no provable significant relationship exists. The reasons for this unexpected result can be explained by:
1) unsuitably adopted uniform economic success criteria for all forest districts, whose diversification in terms of management goal hierarchy did not allow studying the whole population of forest districts with regard to analysis of universal values,
2) unsuitably anticipated correlation between economic success and qualifications of a manager, given significant reduction of forest district managers’ authority caused by their obligation to strictly comply with the long-term forest management plans, or excessive subordination of forest district managers to the decisions of a higher level authorities of the State Forests NFH,
3) in addition, one cannot totally exclude that the applied statistical methods (designed primarily for the area of knowledge based on empirical research) were not optimal for the study of correlations from the nature-economics relationships.
The parallel studies carried out without considering the forest fund as a compensating factor, as well as those carried out in model forest district groups, established with regard to the results of comprehensive inspections, seem to prove that the main reason behind the absence of a correlation between economic success factors and formal qualifications resulting from professional education of forest district managers seem to be the first of the aforementioned causes. Bearing in mind the strong diversification of economic goal hierarchies of forest districts, a suggestion can be brought up to change the structure of forestry curricula. In addition, the absence of a distinct correlation between economic success factors and qualifications resulting from seniority can be linked to the limited autonomy of forest district managers in decision-making.
Another factor to be considered is too short period in the managerial position which, additionally, makes it impossible to study the assumed causal relationships between qualifications of forest district managers and economic success. More precise assessment of the importance of these hypotheses for forest economy would require continuation of the study.
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