Paper short abstract:

Audits and indicators are increasingly used in managing human resource use. But audit culture has also come under attack. Who is using audits and who benefits? Our case study comes from the Canadian fisheries and takes into account legal pluralism.

Paper long abstract:

Audits that employ a range of indicators are increasingly the tool of choice for managing a range of human endeavors, including natural resource exploitation. This is true at many different scales of governance (Davis et al. 2012). But audit culture has also increasingly come under attack as failing to live up to the claims of enhancing transparency and accountability (Shore 2008). Who is harnessing the power of indicators and performance audits? Who benefits from these measurements? How is governance impacted by the audit approach? We address these questions in a specific context of legal pluralism generated by multiple levels of regulation affecting fishing enterprises. In developing a "report card" approach to assessing Canadian fisheries, we have explored the failure to incorporate social, governance and cultural indicators in many global examples. There is also institutional resistance to performance indicators that measure governing for environmental sustainability. This case study suggests the need for careful thought on the interactions of legal pluralism and the audit culture.