Comment: This post is the smallest paper written in one of my Masters program courses. We had assignments due every two weeks. It points to a harmony that businesses should strive towards. This harmony or alignment with the natural order is something I pointed to in several of my postings such as in the Operations Management posts and humanitarian posts among others. Companies should design the operations to flow in natural resonance or harmonies.
Introduction
Leonardo Da Vinci, LDV, used seven principles to develop understanding of the natural. One principle was the concept of “Connessioni” or Italian for connections. The concept is to look for the interconnectedness between all things, systems thinking. LDV also drew upon the principle of “Arte e Scienza” or the art and science which is the balance between scientific rigor and artful expression (Gelb, 1998). LDV was appealing to the natural order that he saw in harmony which is beauty in all things natural. Likewise, organizations have an organic tendency towards natural beauty.
Organizations in the past tended to focus on linear and hierarchical processes that were often disruptive to the natural harmonies found in their inherent beauty. Many people may argue that beauty in an operational environment is nonsense and insist that egocentric, hierarchical, and power centric empires are the only way to manage complexity. This is an outcome of one’s personal culture more than anything else. If complexity follows natural order then the objectives of the business, green initiatives, sustainability, and social responsibility all fuse uniquely into a harmonious organization demonstrating the natural beauty of a synchronous revenue producing system.
Building Green
The green movement is needed and politicized. The politicized aspect of the green movement is inharmonious to the honest objectives and benefits sought in exchange for the expediency of a political agenda. The true objectives center the need for humans to operate in harmony with nature. This generally means a focus on renewable natural resources and a reduction in waste products in favor of a movement towards biodegradable waste products. Green projects can range from consumer products to major earthen projects such as reservoirs and water treatment systems.
Planning green projects is a balance sought between social and environmental benefits and the project cost. The environmental and social benefits may include development of markets of green products and construction of green facilities that meet the green objectives. This has secondary or spin off effects creating capital, hard currency, and tax revenues that are green related (Finnerty, 2007, p 273).
The costs of green projects should not exceed the benefits derived. In order to make green initiatives more attractive governments may offer ‘Tax Holidays’, land grants, subsidize, offer low interest rates or loan guarantees, and assurances of resources such as currency, materials, or energy. The greater the incentives, the lower the expected rates of return (Finnerty, 2007, p 274).
Productive green projects harmonize human consumption and natural systems. For example, hydro-electric reservoirs serve many green and social objectives. The reservoir strenghtens riparian ecological systems and becomes a refuge for wildlife. The water cycle provides renewable sources of water. In the meantime, the social benefits gained include flood controls, renewable energy production, jobs, and recreational sites.
The construction projects can be government managed and industry operated or privately owned. There are at least ten models for such public-private partnerships in large scale projects (Finnerty, 2007, p 280). Hydro-electric projects are government owned with various aspects of the operation leased out. For example, reservoir structural maintenance may be leased to a private firm while the operation of power generation may be leased to another firm. The reservoir’s territory may be government controlled with sections open to private development generating opportunities for income and tax revenues improving human communities and the quality of life.
Social Responsibility
Corporate governance is a focus on social-political concerns. Under this auspice industry takes on traditional governmental responsibilities in an effort to improve the enforcement- compliance relationship between government and industry. If industry performs the duties reasonably well then government agrees to leave industry alone.
Social responsibilities for most companies involve operating in ethical manners, providing safe and hospitable working environments, offering education and health benefits, and generally giving back to the community in some way. Corporate leaders face a dynamic and challenging task attempting to apply societal ethical standards to responsible business practice (Morimoto, 2005, p 315). Companies that promote morality and ethics in business usually have an easier time developing cooperative culture than those that encourage unethical or immoral behavior (Kerzner, 2009, p 339). Giving back to the community usually involves activities such as volunteering to perform community service activities. Social responsibilities uphold cultural values, needs, and activities of a community. “An organization’s culture is also influenced by the society’s culture” (Cleland and Ireland, 2007, p467). Culture is defined as a set of shared ideas and beliefs associated with a way of life in an organization or group of people (Cleland and Ireland, 2007, p463). In a culture gone wrong, governmental lifecycles in big public projects can become a culture of ambition, pride, sudden silence and secrecy, blame, and move onto the next major project with few results despite the same individuals in a private sector project demonstrating positive results and performance (Wileman, 2006).
The cost of social responsibilities is of course multi-faceted. Supporting social activities and efforts may detract from productivity while at the same time creates variety in the workplace reducing monotony which tends to improve productivity at the same time. Establishing the correct culture within the organization that embraces values of the community will save costs overall. For example, senior management at Arizona Power Services established policies that prevented adversarial relationships with the NRC at the expense of the schedule (Cleland and Ireland, 2007, p 467). This posture prevented long term costly conflicts and potential shutdowns of the projects while the NRC investigated concerns. This policy was a form of project controls and communication policy. The quality of communications greatly influences the project outcome. Misunderstandings or ignoring local culture, nationalistic or corporate, contribute towards friction and problems (Chen, 2005). Conflict causes associated costs which may include lost opportunity costs as well as general risk that could lead to delay costs and/or project failure sunk cost.
Sustainability
The choices made by industry, companies, and project managers affect the long term sustainability which are the decisions and practices that ensure long term survivability. In a parallel thought, the book Collapse discusses how societies failed to identify and manage their sustainable natural and economic resources resulting in the societal collapse. Environmental conditions were the underpinning of the economies by providing energy, food production and materials for housing, as well as other economic activities. The author looks to environmental metrics to determine carrying capacity and capability of a given environment (Diamond, 2005). Diamond’s operationalized view applies well to this discussion as companies publish sustainability reports. They attempt to align business objectives with strategic sustainability objectives. Sustainability objectives typically reflect green initiative for sustainable and renewable resources, sustainable workforces, and sustainable markets. Companies realize caring for the environment, people, and cultures has commercial value of future business.
Like Diamond’s carrying capacity and capability of an ecosystem, companies are realizing that capacity is a constraint and are struggling to build models in order to determine the amount of work that can be performed by human and non-human limitations. The limitation of traditional models is that they only consider human work. Projects are selected in an improved model for capacity planning because of factors such as strategic fit and profitability. The new model considers both technical and business capacity constraints (Kerzner, 2009, p 942). A fifth block is suggested that takes into account socio-environmental factors that long term demands of the organizational culture and strategy place on the community and ecosystems, Figure 1.
Figure 1: Improved capacity planning model with socio-environmental factors added (Kerzner. 2009, p 943).
Harmonizing a Solution
The four objectives of green, social responsibility, business, and sustainability are in a balance that places on a sustainability scale, Figure 2. The sage project manager draws upon an organization’s sustainability objectives linking these strategic objectives to project tasks perhaps through effects based methods with the idea to move towards the sustainable. According to the book Collapse, a movement towards the unsustainable would require a complex economy to support where the business operation was deficient. For example, the moon’s environment could not wholly sustain a mining operation. In return for the minerals mined for agricultural purposes, the Earth would provide the resources such as water and food to continue mining operations. A loss of one of the interdependent elements due to depletion or pollution would cause a ripple effect and a disruption on both the Earth and the moon. Sustainable operations are created by understanding, managing, and sustaining the objective factors in a harmonious manner that yields to long term jobs and improved quality of life.
Figure 2: Business, green, and social initiatives converge to place the organization on the scale of sustainability.
Final Thoughts
The matrix organizations prevalent today are a cultural change empowering subject matter experts while disrupting empires and the authoritarian culture of the past. The project manager has transformed from a managerial-supervisory role towards a leadership role. These roles now require the project manager to link strategy to tasks and consider the full scope of impacts against an organization. Green, social, and sustainability issues need to become part of the planning cycle of projects. Only when the harmony between all the objectives is achieved will long term social and financial successes be possible.
Chen, M. T (2005). Innovative pre-planning for international projects. AACE International Transactions, 1.1-01.6. Retrieved
Cleland, D. and Ireland, L. R. (2007). Ch.22: Cultural considerations in project management. In Project Management: Strategic Design and Implementation, (5th), (pp. 463-485). New York: McGraw Hill.
Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed, 1st ED. Viking Adult, United States.
Finnerty, J. (2007). Issues for the host government. In Project finanacing: asset-based financial engineering. (2nd ed.), (pp 273-285). New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons Inc.
Gelb, M (1998). How to think like leonardo da vinci: seven steps to genius every day. Bantam Dell. New York
Kerzner, H. (2009). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. (10th e.d.). John wiley & sons, Inc. New York.
Morimoto, R., Ash, J. & Hope, C. (2005, December). Corporate social responsibility audit: From theory to practice. Journal of Business Ethics,62(4), 315-325. Retrieved January 29, 2008, from ABI/Inform Global
Wileman, A. (2006, April). Sorry lifestyle of a government project. Management Today, 28. Retrieved May 7, 2009, from Business Source Complete
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