Over the past decade, the business sector has come under increasing pressure
to improve their environmental, safety, and health (ESH) performance. This pressure
has stemmed from both external and internal sources with the organization. Public
image, legislative and regulatory requirements, stakeholder awareness of
environmental performance, sustainable development, and changing corporate values
are driving forces that are leading companies to take a serious look at their ESH
function.
The increased focus on the business and sustainable aspects of ESH issues has
created a demand by management to assess the current organizational strategy related
to ESH. Strategy, in this respect, can be thought of as the manner in which issues are
approached and handled. Unfortunately, a comprehensive approach does not exist for
assessing the ESH and sustainable development strategies of an organization and
linking it to the overall competitive strategy of the organization. Developing a
framework for assessing the ESH strategies in an organization was the focus of this
study.
The major portion of the research was the development of profiles for each of
the four strategy developmental levels under the elements of an ESH management
system. Six elements were identified from the literature that comprise an ESH
function's strategy: 1) Strategic plan, 2) structure, 3) finance, 4) technical, 5)
evaluation, and 6) information management. Within each of these elements, profiles
were created for each of the strategy developmental levels that these elements may
utilize: Resistive, adaptive, proactive, and sustainable. The study went beyond
previous research by including safety and health aspects into the environmental
strategy typologies, looking at ESH elements other than the strategic plan and
structure, and providing a more detailed and comprehensive explanation of the
strategy levels.
These profiles were peer reviewed then transformed into a series of questions
that qualitatively assess the ESH strategies used within an organization. A pilot study
was completed of a large high-tech manufacturing organization in Portland, OR. The
pilot study demonstrated the usefulness of the tool to identify areas of improvement in
an ESH function. Use of this assessment tool is the first step an organization needs to
take to understand where they exist in the scale of ESH strategies, and if this is the
ideal strategy to follow. / Graduation date: 2002
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/32390 |
| Date | 18 September 2001 |
| Creators | O'Malley, Brian C. |
| Contributors | Veltri, Anthony T. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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