Assessing Environment,Safety and Health Strategy and Economic Contribution to a Firm's Competitiveness

Abstract

Previously, senior-level executives who wanted to assess environment, safety and health strategy and it's economic contribution have had to satisfy themselves with fragmented, piecemeal approaches that are not linked to the firm's competitive strategy. As a result, environment, safety and health issues are looked at as non-business issues, left out of the firms competitive planning process and exempt from senior-level executive's expectation that this function manage it's internal and external affairs strategically. Because both external and external financial analysts will rely on available measures of environment, safety and health performance, practitioners in this field must develop and make available newer kinds of information, which most accurately reflects progress toward helping the firm to compete. Strategic management and technical specialists have developed powerful approaches for assessing strategy in research and development, design and process engineering, manufacturing, finance, marketing, and management information. So far, however, the environment, safety and health function has not received comparable guidance. This paper suggests such an assessment approach. While the research on the efficacy of this proposed assessment approach is currently being pilot tested within the construction industry, it is believed that with certain minor modifications, it is applicable to other industry types.