Case study: Management system verification using responsible care® at Rohm & Haas: Lessons learned

In this article, Rohm & Haas' Responsible Care® implementation strategy and management system verification (MSV) experiences are detailed. Recommendations on how to strengthen the verification process are provided.     

External relational attributions: Attributing cause to others' relationships

I present an attributional approach to understanding how people perceive and respond to the effects of others' relationships in the workplace by suggesting that people perceive others' relationships to be causal sources of workplace outcomes. Specifically, I suggest that individuals' responses to negative outcomes at work can be better understood by differentiating between two types of external attributional explanations: external relational attributions and external nonrelational attributions. This research focuses on the conceptual development of external relational attributions, which are defined as those attributional explanations made for outcomes or behaviors experienced or observed by a focal individual that locate the cause of an outcome within the relationship between two others (people, groups, organizations, or any combination), not including the focal individual. Further, I propose situational antecedents and behavioral outcomes of external relational attributions, with an emphasis on individuals' behaviors toward others' relationships. Lastly, I highlight the advantages of considering the role of others' relationships when applying attribution theory to a variety of organizational phenomena and present directions for future research.     

Research priorities for managing the impacts and dependencies of business upon food,energy, water and the environment

Delivering access to sufficient food, energy and water resources to ensure human wellbeing is a major concern for governments worldwide. However, it is crucial to account for the ‘nexus’ of interactions between these natural resources and the consequent implications for human wellbeing. The private sector has a critical role in driving positive change towards more sustainable nexus management and could reap considerable benefits from collaboration with researchers to devise solutions to some of the foremost sustainability challenges of today. Yet opportunities are missed because the private sector is rarely involved in the formulation of deliverable research priorities. We convened senior research scientists and influential business leaders to collaboratively identify the top forty questions that, if answered, would best help companies understand and manage their food-energy-water-environment nexus dependencies and impacts. Codification of the top order nexus themes highlighted research priorities around development of pragmatic yet credible tools that allow businesses to incorporate nexus interactions into their decision-making; demonstration of the business case for more sustainable nexus management; identification of the most effective levers for behaviour change; and understanding incentives or circumstances that allow individuals and businesses to take a leadership stance. Greater investment in the complex but productive relations between the private sector and research community will create deeper and more meaningful collaboration and cooperation.     

Making the CERCLA Criteria Analysis of Remedial Alternatives More Objective

This article shows how decision analysis techniques assisted decision makers in the critical RI/FS task of technology selection at a specific Superfund site. Each remediation alternative's performance was quantified by creating a set of objective evaluation measures tied to the criteria mandated in the comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980. The evaluation measure scores were input into a quantitative decision analysis model used to rank alternatives based on their performance relative to the CERCLA criteria, and to provide insight to the sensitivity of the results to changes in decision maker preferences or technology performance. The model is designed to reflect the site decision maker's preferences and the site-specific characteristics within the framework of the nine CERCLA criteria. This model will give Superfund site decision makers an objective and transparent framework to evaluate remedial technologies.