Conservation and Management of the Environment - Case Study Example

Conservation and Management of the Environment Conservation and management of the environment is an extremely crucial aspect in any organization; whether it is a manufacturing or a service industry. KTI is a manufacturing company where volumes of wastes are released to the environment daily. The firm lacks a proper waste disposal and recycling mechanism. Thus, when Jacquie Lipscomb is employed in the company, being an environmentalist, she shows her concern and commitment to conserving the environment. Moreover, Jacquie is distinguished from other employees by her utter most interest in recycling of the wastes from the company. On the other hand, her employer Carl Damon is not strongly into environmentalism. He gets excited and hopes that Jacquie would create awareness about the entire thing across the organization’s employees. Jacquie Lipscomb’s interest was in prevention of pollution which dated back to her school days. She used to track everything that happened to all the papers and came up with a recycling program that was implemented in the entire school. Thus, Jacquie was really encouraged by the company’s interest in conserving the environment. She got accustomed to all the operations at KTI and educated herself of all the outputs from the manufacturing procedures and designed ways through which the firm could reduce the release of harmful substances into the atmosphere. Her work at KTI was remarkable and Carl, her boss, was really impressed with her performance at work. After about a year, Jacquie realized that the company has been selling its wastes to another company which never disposed the wastes properly. This made her to approach her boss for clarification. To her surprise, Carl disclosed how the implementation of environmental approaches made the firm’s interest to diminish. In addition, his response was clear that the strategies Jacquie had put in place were never supported. Jacquie felt deceived and wondered if the management is transparent with every operation in the company. Jacquie has all the reasons to feel or rather conclude that Carl deceived her. Deceit has been a problem in companies for years. Thus, to cope with such situations in organizations, there are a number of actions that one should take. These actions are meant to make a person deal with the management which has lost its sight of vision and reality and failed to implement the strategies that are worth to the company, employees, environment and the entire society. Courses of Action To start with, pinpointing the reason why managers sometimes lie is extremely crucial. A lying management is exposed through several ways. For instance, Jacquie discovered her boss is liar when the strategies she had in place were not fully implemented. A manager who does not take responsibility for the errors in the company and fails to point out or rather comment on the performance of an operation in the firm is deemed to be deceitful. Carl never took full responsibility of the Jacquie’s implementation strategies. Instead, he complained about dropped profits in the organization when asked to clarify the progress of the recycling program. Moreover, understanding the behavior of a manager in circumstances where a program is not fully implemented enables one to approach a problem comfortably. Such managers, such as Carl, always try to prove a point to the higher directors of the company so as to be seen as the only persons doing the right thing. They do not care about what other staffs suggest to improve the image of the organization. Thus, it is vital for employees, such as Jacquie, to cease from taking this personally. Instead, they should view them as managers with inferiority complex since they always masquerade their fake confidence and use the staff to cover up their incompetence and inadequacies. Carl uses Jacquie’s ideas and recycling programs to cover up his incompetence. He claims that low profits in the organization are as a result of implementing the recycling programs. Thus, when Jacquie view this situation in this line, she reduces the psychological damage it causes her. In a humble and subtle way, without arrogance, Jacquie should aim at seeking minor wins instead of fighting back with force. She can only achieve this by the full display of professional etiquette alongside confidence so as to build a solid position at the workplace. This would undermine the actions of the boss and indicate to other employees the importance of the recycling program. Furthermore, coping with deceit in any organization requires one to be a model to other employees. This is achieved by familiarizing oneself with the entire job protocols and a full understanding of the principles behind work ethics. Precisely, one should be prepared to give a plausible explanation if in any case he or she is questioned about the current problem or situation in the organization. Thus, Jacquie should be in a position to justify her actions by showing respect and work with confidence despite the failures in implementation of the pollution prevention and recycling programs. She should provide all the proof that everything she was doing was for the good of the company by not making or rather creating any faults in line of duty. This goes in line by keeping a professional distance and limiting the contact with the leaders who display bad or rather poor qualities of leadership since they can use this to taint down an employee’s professional image. Avoiding steps that would make the organization to work against one’s activities in the organization would greatly assist in coping with a deceitful manager. In addition, Jacquie should avoid confrontations and criticizing the boss as it will result to issues that can make one to lose a job. It is quite clear that Carl has poor management skills. He does not think and reason widely. Instead of getting down and search for the possible causes of low interests in the company, the boss claims that the implementation of the recycling programs which were introduced by Jacquie are the major causes of low interests or rather profits in the organization. He goes further and opts to selling the firm’s wastes to another company which does not put into consideration the waste disposal ethics of the environment. Thus, for Jacquie to cope with this deceit from her boss, she should, by all means avoid criticism and continue playing her role in the organization. Lastly, intimidation of employees is common in organization where the management not transparent with its dealings. In a situation similar to that of Jacquie, she can be made an easier target when she entertains intimidation. Recycling programs being pointed as the possible cause for low interests in the firm is a clear sign of intimidation. Thus, to cope with this, Jacquie should remain calm and detach herself from any emotional and annoying incidents in the organization. Moreover, she should cease from controlling what is beyond or rather out of her control. Instead, she should focus on every single aspect that she can comfortably control. This will make her job easier as she seeks possible ways to revive the entire program according to her initial plans. She can achieve this by finding allies from the organization who can support her ideas and implementation of environmental strategies. Therefore, from the above discussed courses of action, the suitable action for Jacquie at KTI is the last one; avoiding intimidation and work with the support of other interested employees to design strategies that can assist in the successful implementation of the recycling programs. There are various steps to be followed in achieving this action (action plan). Action Plan Firstly, Jacquie should identify a potential group of employees who have aligned interests, who are trustworthy and focused. This team of workers should consist of individuals from across all the departments in the company. More so, influential people in the department will make the entire program a success since they are the people who represent these departments during the board meetings. Secondly, Jacquie should assess all the potential and capabilities of the firm financially. This can be achieved by involving a trusted member of the finance and accounting department. Previous records of transactions, monthly income, annual budgets and expenditures, taxes, the annual output and forecast of revenue, level of production, budgets and general expenditures. These aspects require a thorough assessment and analysis before moving to the next level of plan implementation. The type and sufficiency of infrastructure are crucial aspects when it comes to implementation of the plan since recycling of these waste materials will require operational facilities for effective disposal. An assessment of the equipment to be used for this project is essential since it would determine the rate or rather the speed and effectiveness of the entire process. The amount of wastes is extremely crucial in this action plan. Getting a clear view of the wastes produced in every manufacturing process is significant to the entire plan since it will determine the budget or rather the funds that will be used in disposing or recycling the wastes. In addition, the type or nature of wastes produced should be considered in the entire plan. Furthermore, defining the aim, vision and mission of the process with clarity would greatly assist the KTI management to have a clear view of the process’ intentions. Alongside an official documentation of this, the company would see the significance of fully supporting the recycling programs. Alternatively, the proposed document of the project’s aim vision and mission can be presented to the board of directors through the board meeting for approval. This will be quite easy since majority of the members involved will fully support it. Finally, Jacquie should set up a deadline for all these activities. This would enable Jacquie to move to the next step which will be implementation of the recycling program. Implementation of the entire process requires an in-depth plan or rather strategies since they will determine the success or failure of the programs. After approval of the project’s proposal by the board of directors, an immediate commencement of the project should be underway. Thus, the means, people, places and all the relevant equipment for the project should be in place on time. All these aspects, for instance the people, places and the equipment to be used in the project are determined by the board of directors through the management department. However, the implementers, being led by Jacquie are the ones to determine or rather give a proposal of all these aspects. Conclusion In conclusion, the entire case study presents a situation whereby an individual, Jacquie, is employed at KTI as an environmentalist. At first, she receives an impression that the entire company will support her recycling programs. Everyone seems corporative and the implementations of all the programs begin. After a year, she realizes that the management of the organization was not fully supporting the recycling programs as proposed. Instead, the waste materials were being sold to another company whose disposal mechanism was not efficient. Carl, the company’s boss claims that the recycling programs made the firm’s profits to go down. Jacquie surprises on receiving this. It is clear that people at the management level are deceitful, as seen from Carl. She wonders if there are other things in the company, apart from her project, which are not implemented accordingly. To cope with this situation, this paper suggests several course of action and finally discusses one course that is appropriate to successfully handle the circumstance. Therefore, involving a group of influential individuals, who are trustful and focused would assist the KTI’s management or rather the entire firm to deal with deceit. Work Cited Neale, Palena., Thapa, Shyam. & Boyce, Carolyn. Preparing a Case Study: A Guide for Designing and Conducting a Case Study for Evaluation Input. Pathfinder International. 2006. Read More