Abstract:
Sustainability of fisheries, both at a macro level and at the level of individual firms, is of huge significance economically and socially to many countries. Changes in value chains and in particular the growth of offshoring compounds sustainability and socio-economic issues. New Zealand has the world’s fourth largest fisheries exclusive economic zone (EEZ), yet it ranks only 25th in terms of fisheries exporting nations, with exports amounting to a mere 1.2 percent of the total global fisheries trade (MFish, 2010). What’s more, the fisheries industry is characterised by plant closures, job losses and, according to Stringer (2010), increasingly the offshoring of value-added processing and export of related technology, particularly to China. This erodes the industry’s technological base which is necessary to sustain innovation. This study applies a Penrosian perspective to the New Zealand fisheries industry. For Penrose (1959), firms use a combination of external and internal resources to grow, but growth is limited essentially by the capacities of management, and whether entrepreneurial managers see opportunities for growth arising from other possible uses of its resources. This approach has been further refined by Teece in recent years (e.g. Teece, 2009). The framework derived from these studies encompasses the entrepreneur, firm and industry levels of analysis. Using Penrosian mapping, I look at the largest firms in the NZ fisheries industry. One exhibits a strong ‘technological base’ and enjoys a solid foundation for sustainable growth through entrepreneurial management, whereas others appear to have weaker bases and lack entrepreneurial management. The result is the dismal situation described above.