PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF TROPICAL AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE

Decisions that are made in any field of interest will in one way or another affect the society, be they at the local or international level. Regardless of whether the decisions are intended for sustainable development of the nation's economic growth or something else, the ripple effects will definitely affect the society in both short and long terms. The effects sometimes are positive but at other times negative. The negative effects are the ones that policy-makers would like to avoid, if not lessen to a certain extent. In Peninsular Malaysia, the former Forest Research Institute (FRJ) was a unit under the Department of Forestry Peninsular Malaysia. Subsequently, in 1985, FRI was instituted as a statutory body now called the Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM), reporting directly to the Ministry of Primary Industries and now to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (NRE). In the former structure under the Forestry Department of Peninsular Malaysia, a major disadvantage was that not all pertinent issues related to forestry reached the institute. This resulted in FRI's having a limited influence on decision-making at the national level. As a separate entity reporting directly to the Ministry, FRIM is now able to contribute more effectively to the formulation and implementation of forest-related policies. This paper, therefore, not only sheds light on the organizational structure usually associated with forestry research and development (R&D) institutions, but also examines how such an organizational structure can contribute more positively to the formulation and implementation of forest policies.