Choices, Options, and Constraints: Decision Making and Decision Spaces in Natural Resource Management

This paper analyzes the decision making processes of the staff of a Mexican national marine park and how their options for natural resource management are affected by internal, external, and relational constraints. Using ethnographic data gathered from 2001-2003, I suggest that the failure of the marine park to accomplish its management goals was not from the lack of a plan to manage the marine area or from internal policies or practices, but from mismatch in objectives with other institutions of Mexican government and a consequent inability to access the needed resources and support. In addition, this paper argues for a more contextually-based understanding of decision making in organizations like protected areas that can account for many of the problems and failures that are often blamed on internal policies or practices. This paper proposes a model of "decision spaces" that highlights the space between decision and action, in which these constraints, as well as opportunities, are confronted and potentially managed through flexible strategies that arise from the interaction between decisions and the surrounding sociocultural context.