Public Natural Resource Management (NRM) agencies operate in complex social-ecological domains. These complexities proliferate unpredictably therefore investigating and supporting the ability of public agencies to respond effectively is increasingly important. However, understanding how public NRM agencies innovate and restructure to negotiate the range of particular complexities they face is an under researched field. One particular conceptualisation of the social-ecological complexities facing NRM agencies that is of growing influence is the Water–Energy–Food (WEF) nexus. Yet, as a tool to frame and understand those complexities it has limitations. Specifically, it overlooks how NRMs respond institutionally to these social-ecological complexities in the context of economic and organisational challenges—thus creating a gap in the literature. Current debates in public administration can be brought to bear here. Using an organisational cultures approach, this paper reports on a case study with a national NRM agency to investigate how they are attempting to transform institutionally to respond to complexity in challenging times. The research involved 12 elite interviews with senior leaders from Natural Resources Wales, (NRW) and investigated how cultural narratives are being explicitly and implicitly constructed and mobilised to this end. The research identified four distinct and sequential cultural narratives: collaboration, communication, trust, and empowerment where each narrative supported the delivery of different dimensions of NRW’s social-ecological complexity mandate. Counter to the current managerialist approaches in public administration, these results suggest that the empowerment of expert bureaucrats is important in responding effectively to complexity.

中文翻译：

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在公共自然资源管理中管理社会生态复杂性的四种文化叙事

公共自然资源管理 (NRM) 机构在复杂的社会生态领域运作。这些复杂性以不可预测的方式激增，因此调查和支持公共机构有效应对的能力变得越来越重要。然而，了解公共 NRM 机构如何创新和重组以协商他们面临的特定复杂性范围是一个研究不足的领域。NRM 机构所面临的社会生态复杂性影响越来越大的一种特殊概念是水-能源-食品 (WEF) 关系。然而，作为构建和理解这些复杂性的工具，它有其局限性。具体而言，它忽略了 NRM 如何在经济和组织挑战的背景下对这些社会生态复杂性做出制度性反应，从而在文献中造成空白。公共行政领域当前的辩论可以在这里进行。本文使用组织文化方法，报告了与国家 NRM 机构合作的案例研究，以调查他们如何尝试在制度上进行转型以应对充满挑战的时代的复杂性。该研究涉及对来自威尔士自然资源部 (NRW) 的高级领导人的 12 次精英访谈，并调查了文化叙事如何为此目的明确和隐含地构建和动员。该研究确定了四种不同且连续的文化叙事：协作、交流、信任和赋权，其中每种叙事都支持北威州社会生态复杂性任务的不同维度的交付。与当前公共行政中的管理主义方法相反，