Planning for the strategic management of South Africa's West Coast rock lobster fishery : an integrated approach to group decision support

As Bryson (1995) points out, strategic planning is particularly useful for assisting organisations and communities to deal with change. This study was carried out at a time of great change in South Africa, when a new fisheries policy was being formulated and negotiated. The research describes an intervention with a group of .fisheries managers, scientists, fishing company directors and other key stakeholders, in planning for the future management of the West Coast Rock Lobster fishery. The primary objective of the study was to consider an integrated approach to group decision support, incorporating a particular soft-OR approach, SODA, together with multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). An integration of these two approaches has recently been suggested by researchers, for several reasons. Firstly, different phases of an intervention usually involve different tasks. Secondly, mixing methodologies will enable different aspects of the problem to be modelled and analysed. SODA was used at the outset, for divergent exploration and structuring of the problems surrounding the development of an operational management procedure (OMP) for the fishery, including more subjective and qualitative information. Several stakeholder groups opposed the idea of an OMP in the form in which it was proposed.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Statistical Sciences

Year dc:date.issued

1998

Author dc:creator

• Malyon, Brett Edwin

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Stewart, Theodor J

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/9573

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/9573