Best practices for dissertation committees to review chapters? From talking to colleagues in a variety of fields and different institutions, there seems to be a huge variability in the ways committees handle their responsibilities of reviewing dissertation chapters. I would like to know two things: 


What do you consider the best practices for advisors, other committee members, and candidates in order to move the dissertation writing along efficiently? 
Does the Journal Review policy (specified below) seem reasonable to you? 



  Journal Review Method
  
  In this model, the dissertation advisor treats his or her role as the
  chair of the candidate's committee as if he or she were the editor of
  a journal and the dissertation chapters articles submitted for review.
  The student submits a chapter to the advisor who decides whether it is
  ready to send for review. If it is, then the advisor sends the chapter
  to committee members for review. The committee members make a brief
  (2-4 page) report to the advisor that either: accepts the chapter as
  is, accepts it pending minor revisions, rejects it pending major
  revisions, or rejects the chapter entirely. The advisor then makes the
  final determination as to the status of the chapter. It will be the
  advisor's responsibility to make sure other committee members submit
  their reports in a timely fashion. The defense is held when the
  advisor judges all of the chapters to be "accepted".
  
  The primary benefits of this policy are that it creates a clear
  organizational structure which allows candidates to receive prompt,
  actionable feedback on their work.
The policy is straight forward but an open question is what use a complete reject means if the advisor has deemed the chapter as passable. As I see it the advisor has (should have) both the insight into the details of the problem and research as well as general knowledge of academic expectations to deem when a manuscript is in shape for passing on. If a committee member does not think this is right then the question still remains who may be right and who may be wrong? Is the decision by vote in the end since there will likely be three or five persons involved in reading the chapters? In my system it is possible for a student to defend even if the advisor or committee member advise against it. Only fools do but it is possible. It is however, still possible for committee members to disagree but usually when issues arise it is because the student-advisor communication has failed for one or the other reason.

So in my view the "journal review method" is a good start but you also need to consider what will happen if there is disagreement and how to possibly weigh the input. Do all committee members have equal weight in all aspects or are they experts in some parts and therefore carry more weight in those chapters than in others. I think the system requires some tweaking in order to accommodate the clear differences that exist between a journal publications and a thesis (sensu monograph) where a thesis typically contains larger quantities of more detailed information than would be possible in a published paper.

As a side point, in my system where paper based theses are the norm, it is hard to "reject" a published paper; one can disagree but something that has passed peer review (albeit a poor one) has still passed. The key pint is thus the overall quality of the work and of the emerging scientist behind it. This i snot necessarily covered by the "journal review method" alone.