Marine Protected Areas, Multiple-Agency Management, and Monumental Surprise in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands

Table 7

Concepts and definitions in ecosystem-based management and institutional resilience.

Concept	Definitions and key criteria
Adaptive management	Managing institutions purposefully formulate policy as an uncontrolled, nonreplicated experiment, monitor the results of the strategy, and iteratively revise their approach in order to adapt to changing social and ecological conditions.
	Key criteria: multiple steps in a prescribed cycle of actions; monitoring results used in evaluation of policy or management actions; purposeful implementation
Organizational transformation	The abandonment of more rigid, path-dependent approaches in favor increased institutional flexibility as a purposeful response or as the result of internal dynamics or external drivers; transformations can result in the capacity of institutions to cross thresholds or transcend rigid pathways to provide an opportunity to develop along new trajectories.
	Key criteria: markers of increased institutional flexibility; Abandonment of previous protocols or procedures in favor of new methods or approaches
Adaptive transformation	Changes in institutions—initiated purposefully or not—that convey the capacity to adjust responses dynamically to changing external drivers and internal processes; adaptive responses convey advantages in allowing institutions to develop along new trajectories or pathways through adjustment of agency approaches and decision-making systems as a response to external drivers or internal dynamics.
	Key criteria: markers of increased institutional flexibility; new decision-making processes or structures adopted; Evidence that changes have conveyed an advantage in terms of institutional responses to internal dynamics or external disturbances