Developing Ideas Digest May/June 1998
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5.

Corporate Paradigm Shifting

For businesses grappling with sustainability, shifting corporate culture is sure to be a company-wide affair -- encompassing everyone from the spray painter who needs to know what to do with used solvents; to the designer whose job is to keep energy and material inputs to a minimum; to the environmental manager who must be conversant with the legislative, community and ethical forces that guide environmental policies, as well as with the tools to translate them into daily practice. According to Alison Bird of the Institute of Environmental Management in the U.K., the twin goals of corporate training programs are to motivate this diverse range of employees so they are committed to sustainability, and then to equip them with the skills and knowledge to make a difference. Bird outlines a number of approaches -- from 'keeping it simple', to using 'champions' from the shop floor to spread the message, to integrating sustainability concerns into the corporate culture. But while these practical suggestions are served a la carte for the individual company to adopt or reject as its needs dictate, some corporations have opted for a complete package of management techniques, wrapped in such exotic monikers as Total Quality Management, Hoshin or Continuous Improvement. These are all aspects of a managerial style popularized by Japanese industries in the 1960s, during a concerted effort to improve the quality and reputations of their products. A prime assertion of this school of management is that change does not take place in revolutionary leaps, but incrementally over time, as the result of the daily vigilance and accumulated insights of those who work on the shop floor. With this idea, the rising Japanese corporations promoted a model of industrial relations where management set goals and priorities but allowed workers to design ways of achieving them.

Although many western companies have since adopted these techniques in order to increase competitiveness, the approach is also deemed appropriate to implementing sustainability plans, where the need for workers' creative input similarly suggests a bottom-up approach. GE Plastics Europe, for example, set environmental health and safety targets in 1993 that included an 80% reduction in hydrocarbon emissions, 25% reduction in waste by weight, 50% reduction in personal injury requiring medical attention and another 50% reduction in lost time accidents. After flattening the corporate hierarchy and improving learning processes and internal communications, all of the goals were achieved except the halving of lost time accidents. Sceptics such as Chris Argyris of Harvard University insist, however, that these strategies based on 'empowerment' of workers rarely succeed, since they contain mixed messages that destroy management's credibility and workers' trust. Argyris argues that while executives preach that workers should have the freedom to exercise their creativity and individual judgement, in reality they jealously guard their own power and wind up saying "do your own thing - the way we tell you."

Still, there's evidence that both empowerment-oriented and more traditional training strategies can help meet sustainability targets. Academics Klaus North and Sabine Daig studied eight German and British companies with green programs, and found that while there was a mix of top-down and bottom-up training programs, the one commonality was that all companies faced immense pressure to improve their environmental performance -- a task that required the participation of the whole workforce. [greening human resources]

total quality management n. a structured system for satisfying customers and suppliers needs and wants by integrating the business environment, continuous improvement, and break-throughs with development, improvement, and maintenance cycles while changing organizational culture (Integrated Quality Dynamics, Inc.)

Wehrmeyer, Walter (ed). Greening People : Human Resources and Environmental Management. Sheffield, GB: Greenleaf Publishing, 1996. 409 p.

Virtual Ideas

Lots of Links and TQM basics from Integrated Quality Dynamics, Inc. http://www.iqd.com/

Society for Organizational Learning http://www.sol-ne.org/