Many production activities typically produce undesirable outputs, e.g., the production of the pollutant sulfur dioxide in the generation of electricity. Traditional economic metrics may overstate the efficiency and productivity of these production activities by failing to account for the undesirable outputs. These omissions can lead to conclusions that are biased against resource conservation and protection. Many fisheries capture their target species concomitantly with undesirable outputs such as bycatch of juvenile fish, marine mammals, sea birds, and sea turtles. One such fishery is the California-Oregon (CA/OR) drift gillnet fishery (DGNF), which incidentally takes protected species, such as sea turtles and marine mammals while harvesting swordfish and thresher shark. Beginning in August of 2001, regulatory measures to reduce the take of endangered species (e.g., leatherback sea turtles) have required the annual closure of an area located between Point Conception and 45?? N. latitude, for the time period August 15 to November 15. This regulatory closure acts as a natural experiment for assessing the impact of the time-area closure on the productivity of the CA/OR DGNF. The three primary purposes of this research were to measure the impact of the 2001 time-area closure on the productivity of the CA/OR DGNF, and to estimate the opportunity cost or shadow price of undesirable outputs. These shadow prices provide lower bound estimates of the social costs of conservation regulations intended to protect endangered leatherback sea turtles and other bycatch species. An alternative method which models the joint production of both desirable and undesirable outputs, the directional output distance function approach, was used to estimate the efficiency and productivity of drift gillnet fishing trips, thus crediting trips with reductions in undesirable harvest and increases in desirable outputs for the time period 1996-2008. By incorporating undesirable harvest into the production process, a more appropriate measure of total factor productivity was calculated than what is provided by traditional productivity measures. The new productivity measure can be used to develop more effective policies designed to maintain or improve a fishery's economic performance. The results indicate that efficiency and productivity measures which ignore undesirable outputs substantially misinterpret the economic performance of economic trips. The model that incorporates undesirable outputs indicates that productivity per trip has been growing by 788 pounds of swordfish over the research period relative to the base year. This is considerably lower than the average growth of 964 pounds when undesirable outputs are ignored and 878 pounds when undesirable outputs are allowed to expand. However, post-closure averages suggest that conventional estimates understate the economic performance of the observed trips. Post-closure productivity growth resulted in an increase of 334 pounds of swordfish harvest when adjusted for undesirable outputs. Average trip shadow prices (per animal captured) revealed a conservation opportunity cost for the reduction of undesirable outputs of &2,500 for marketable discards, &6,600 for unmarketable discards, &28,800 for sea turtles, and &9,800 for marine mammals in forgone composite swordfish and thresher shark revenue.

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Bee pollinators can thrive in highly urbanized environments if their preferred floral resources and habitat types are available. Enhanced pollinator habitats are being created globally, with a large local effort in Portland, Oregon. This project determined if we were providing the most preferred floral resources at enhanced pollinator sites for bees, if floral resources were available throughout the season, and if differences in dietary preferences between native and honey bees would allow for the identification of "native bee floral resources" in South East Portland. Bee pollinators were monitored from June to August at three enhanced pollinator sites in South East Portland, Oregon. A total of 566 individual bees were observed, tiny dark bees and bumblebees composed the large majority of the urban bee composition. Vegetation metrics and bee presence were correlated using a Generalized Linear Mixed Model and significant variables that predicted bee presence included Solidago canadenisis (p-value 0.0024), density of floral resources (p-value

The purpose of this research project is to answer the question, "How and with what effects does Logan Aluminum, Inc. translate and implement the principles of socio-technical and team management theory into its organizational culture and operational activities?" To answer this question the researcher first examined the literature related to those theories and then conducted on-site interviews and ethnographic research to witness their implementation. The researcher found strong evidence to prove the validity and accuracy of many of those theories when practiced in an organizational setting. Theories particularly proven were those relating to the necessity of constant training, the role of leadership, team and team member capabilities, employee morale and team maturation.

In light of research that suggests that formal needs analysis leads to efficient and productive training programs, managers and a sampling of non-management employees from a mid-size manufacturing company participated in a needs assessment to determine future training needs for the company's mangers. The information was collected through focus group interviews and a Q-sort technique was developed to categorize the issues raised in the interviews. The categories of training issues and related concerns identified as a result of the focus group interview process were compared to a list of training topics generated by managers through an informal survey prior to the needs assessment. The comparison indicated that the training issues generated by managers in the informal survey were not congruent with the issues identified as a result of the needs assessment process. Comparisons were made between the major issues addressed by various departments, management levels, and functional groups. These comparisons indicated that some concerns were identified by all departments, management levels, and functional areas and could be defined as organizational concerns while other concerns were identified by specific departments, management levels, or functional areas.