23 Articles found
Richard MacLean & Associates, LLC Articles
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Organizations in Transition: An Updated Annotated Bibliography of Published Literature on Environmental, Health, and Safety Organizations (2004–Present)—Part 2: Decision Making and Corporate Perception
Selected articles on the practical aspects of managing EHS/S organizations Env ironmental , health, safety, and sustainability (EHS/S) professionals can find literally tens of thousands of articles and hundreds of books on the technical, ...
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Organizations in Transition: An updated annotated bibliography of published literature on environmental, health, and safety organizations (2004–Present)—Part 1: Intrinsic Organizational Properties
Environmental, health, safety, and sustainability (EHS/S) professionals can find literally tens of thousands of articles and hundreds of books on the technical, regulatory, and management system dimensions of their profession. The problem, however, ...
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Organizational Design: Benchmarking
This "Environmental Leadership" column is the second installment in a two-part series based on the most recent research by CEI. The study focuses primarily on organizational design and dealing with the aftermath of reorganization, which is a ...
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Timing is everything
Being viewed as a respected leader or an irresponsible corporation is as much about timing as anything else. With real estate, it is all about location, location, location. With sustainable development and social responsibility, it is all about ...
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Organizational Design: Business Literature Insights
The research on which this article is based, "Organizations in Transition," focuses on the practical aspects of managing environmental, health, safety, and sustainability issues. It has collected information from the published literature and sought ...
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ESG Comes of Age - Article in EQM Journal
World events and trends - especially with respect to supply chains and resources - are undergoing major shifts. Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues are at a tipping point in terms of their influence on shareholder value. This column ...
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When Reporting Structure Is Not Enough - Redrawn lines on an organization chart seldom resolve underlying performance issues
Historically, environmental staffs have been whipsawed between centralized and decentralized structures. There is no universally applicable, ideal organizational structure. Most of these companies have tried a variety of structures over the years, ...
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The Elevator Pitch - Be prepared for that brief moment when you can deliver a message to top executives
Everyone understands that you must be prepared when going to formal meetings, such as review sessions with top executives. This typically is not a problem for environmental and sustainability professionals, who are good at doing their homework. But ...
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Executive Airtime - How to get it and put it to good use.
I have participated in the annual environment, health, and safety (EH&S) meetings for Fortune 500 companies where the CEO or some other top executive appears for a few minutes to hand out the safety awards or perform some similar function. The ...
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Dangerous Environments: Watching out for your personal safety, health, and environment
As I write this, two environmental colleagues are on opposite sides of the globe, both in what amount to war zones. They have armed bodyguards. Months back, one had to evacuate a hotel, stepping over broken glass and blood, after a terrorist attack ...
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Grand Central Train Wreck - If not done properly, centralizing environmental organizations can lead to a train wreck
I recently discussed the aftermath of two environment, health, and safety (EH&S) organizational restructurings with several senior professionals who were privy to the details. In one case, the vice president of EH&S was fired after the ...
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Identity Crisis - Just what does an `environmental organization` do for a corporation?
As the saying goes, "If you are not at the table, you may be on the menu." EHS departments are on the menu in today`s cost-cutting environment. Long-established roles are those that can most easily be outsourced or shifted to others, such as ...
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When to Hold and When to Fold - Considerations When Contemplating a Job Change
An environmental professional recently called me for career advice on making a job change. He has a secure job working for a federal agency, but was bored and wanted to work for an organization "with a corporate culture that truly is in sync with ...
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Size matters - But benchmark ratios do not when rightsizing environmental departments
Recently, I received a call from a corporate vice president of environment, health, and safety (EH&S), who asked, "Do you have any data on staffing levels as a function of size? In my 16 years of corporate consulting, no other question has been ...
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Internal Transparency - Focusing on what really matters
Responsible corporations are expected to be transparent. Sustainability reporting has become a de facto mandate for companies that want to be considered good corporate citizens. With all this emphasis on public disclosure, one might assume that ...
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Things that can get you fired an environmental career has some unique challenges
With the economy what it is, job security is a topic on most people’s minds. In a recent article distributed by FINS and The Wall Street Journal, Kelly Eggers examined the top 10 things that one can do to get oneself fired.1 Indeed, a ...
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Resource Wars - What`s Your Battle Plan?
We may think that we are in the environmental business, focused on just the environmental impacts of our company`s products and production processes. But such narrow thinking can lead to overlooking our potential contribution to society ...
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Perverse Trade-offs - Ethical considerations in sustainable development
Within business organizations, decisions that have far-reaching health, safety, environmental, and economic impacts on entire communities (if not nations) can be made unilaterally, sometimes literally by one individual. Corporate managers are in ...
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Can Anyone Be an Environmental Manager?
This column explores the current condition of the EHS profession - and raises a number of troubling questions that have yet to be openly addressed within our professional ranks. The problem was summed up in a headline I saw recently saying, ...
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You`re Out of Order - Proper Strategy Sequencing Is Essential
Far too many environmental strategic planning processes have not only the sequencing out of order, but the internal agreement, alignment, and stability of the process are dysfunctional. And these are the "good ones," since in most companies ...