Governing agencies increasingly employ collaborative forms of decision-making in fisheries management to improve decision quality and legitimacy. However, crafting fair and effective collaborative processes which will achieve these benefits is often difficult. In an effort to identify keys and obstacles to success, this research evaluated the Commercial Groundfish Initiative, a collaborative planning process tasked with reforming the management of Canada's Pacific groundfish fisheries. Using semi-structured interviews, I gathered the perspectives of participants from the two committees within the process: a consensus-based committee of commercial representatives and a committee broadly representative of other interest groups for which consensus was encouraged but not mandated. Control over the design of a proposal for management reform was asymmetrically divided between the two committees, giving the commercial committee the primary role. Participants from the commercial committee expressed high levels of support for their consensus process. Keys to this committee’s success in reaching a high quality agreement were (i) a strong incentive to cooperate, (ii) consensus decision-making, and (iii) independent process facilitation. The latter two functioned as security measures against the potential for process manipulation by participants or governing agencies. Results from an examination of the broader committee indicate non-commercial respondents were largely accepting of an “oversight” role provided that the scope for their input remained sufficient, which it did not. Early involvement in tasks such as designing the process and defining objectives were particularly critical to non-commercial respondents’ perceptions of procedural fairness and their ability to participate effectively. Several participants also raised concerns that the process was not appropriately representative of groups with an interest in groundfish management. The poor performance of the process in these respects overshadowed positive aspects of broadening participation beyond commercial users. Consensus approaches have gained currency among commercial participants as a result of their positive experience and made some of them more willing to consider meaningful collaboration with a broader range of interest groups. The ineffectiveness of the broader committee suggests there is still work to do in designing processes that will actually achieve this meaningful, broad collaboration.

Governing agencies increasingly employ collaborative forms of decision-making in fisheries management to improve decision quality and legitimacy. However, crafting fair and effective collaborative processes which will achieve these benefits is often difficult. In an effort to identify keys and obstacles to success, this research evaluated the Commercial Groundfish Initiative, a collaborative planning process tasked with reforming the management of Canada's Pacific groundfish fisheries. Using semi-structured interviews, I gathered the perspectives of participants from the two committees within the process: a consensus-based committee of commercial representatives and a committee broadly representative of other interest groups for which consensus was encouraged but not mandated. Control over the design of a proposal for management reform was asymmetrically divided between the two committees, giving the commercial committee the primary role. Participants from the commercial committee expressed high levels of support for their consensus process. Keys to this committee’s success in reaching a high quality agreement were (i) a strong incentive to cooperate, (ii) consensus decision-making, and (iii) independent process facilitation. The latter two functioned as security measures against the potential for process manipulation by participants or governing agencies. Results from an examination of the broader committee indicate non-commercial respondents were largely accepting of an “oversight” role provided that the scope for their input remained sufficient, which it did not. Early involvement in tasks such as designing the process and defining objectives were particularly critical to non-commercial respondents’ perceptions of procedural fairness and their ability to participate effectively. Several participants also raised concerns that the process was not appropriately representative of groups with an interest in groundfish management. The poor performance of the process in these respects overshadowed positive aspects of broadening participation beyond commercial users. Consensus approaches have gained currency among commercial participants as a result of their positive experience and made some of them more willing to consider meaningful collaboration with a broader range of interest groups. The ineffectiveness of the broader committee suggests there is still work to do in designing processes that will actually achieve this meaningful, broad collaboration.

Governing agencies increasingly employ collaborative forms of decision-making in fisheries management to improve decision quality and legitimacy. However, crafting fair and effective collaborative processes which will achieve these benefits is often difficult. In an effort to identify keys and obstacles to success, this research evaluated the Commercial Groundfish Initiative, a collaborative planning process tasked with reforming the management of Canada's Pacific groundfish fisheries. Using semi-structured interviews, I gathered the perspectives of participants from the two committees within the process: a consensus-based committee of commercial representatives and a committee broadly representative of other interest groups for which consensus was encouraged but not mandated. Control over the design of a proposal for management reform was asymmetrically divided between the two committees, giving the commercial committee the primary role. Participants from the commercial committee expressed high levels of support for their consensus process. Keys to this committee’s success in reaching a high quality agreement were (i) a strong incentive to cooperate, (ii) consensus decision-making, and (iii) independent process facilitation. The latter two functioned as security measures against the potential for process manipulation by participants or governing agencies. Results from an examination of the broader committee indicate non-commercial respondents were largely accepting of an “oversight” role provided that the scope for their input remained sufficient, which it did not. Early involvement in tasks such as designing the process and defining objectives were particularly critical to non-commercial respondents’ perceptions of procedural fairness and their ability to participate effectively. Several participants also raised concerns that the process was not appropriately representative of groups with an interest in groundfish management. The poor performance of the process in these respects overshadowed positive aspects of broadening participation beyond commercial users. Consensus approaches have gained currency among commercial participants as a result of their positive experience and made some of them more willing to consider meaningful collaboration with a broader range of interest groups. The ineffectiveness of the broader committee suggests there is still work to do in designing processes that will actually achieve this meaningful, broad collaboration. / Forestry, Faculty of / Graduate

The balanced scorecard (BSC) is an accepted methodology for putting strategy into action. The BSC provides a comprehensive performance measurement for an organization with respect to both financial and non-financial perspectives, including the triple bottom line of planet, people, and profit. Through various implementations to companies, organizations, and sectors, balanced scorecards have been used widely both for strategic purposes, as well as for more tactical focus for auditing current performance. BSC implementation is particularly adequate when integrated with the operational processes of the organization. The integration between the strategic plan and the financial and operational plans proceed via the business process model that covers the operational processes associated with the objectives of the organization in the strategy map. In this way, BSC is a tool for real-time monitoring of performance as well as providing the crucial linkage to the organization’s strategy that enables the proper implementation of the organization’s strategy. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been widely applied for measuring the efficiency of a specific decision-making unit (DMU) against a projected point on an efficiency frontier. DEA is therefore particularly suitable for measuring the organizational efficiency based on the BSC indicators, which are defined as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). In the commercial fisheries sector, sustainable strategy of fisheries organizations can be gained by running the current operations more effectively, and by integrating processes enabling adaptation to change. The efficiency frontier of the DEA model can be used to calculate the efficiency of fisheries operations. The proposed research is undertaken as part of the Canadian Fisheries Research Network (CFRN) to investigate the application of BSC and DEA for defining commercial fisheries performance evaluation variables with respect to the objectives of environmental sustainability, economic viability, and social and cultural stability in compliance with, and in the absence of, performance monitoring alleged in the Fisheries and Oceans, Canada Integrated Fisheries Management Plans (IFMP). The combination of BSC-DEA methodologies is developed in this research as a required performance monitoring system suitable for IFMPs for analyzing the relative efficiency of commercial fisheries case studies across Canada towards incorporating best sustainable practices in the industry.