Philosophy of leadership in integrated management systems

MA-Thesis / Master von Wolfram Klussmann

Introduction:

This thesis introduces to problems which have a concern for each executive in the operative management of industrial enterprises and is therefore e.g. also welcomed and expected with tension on behalf of the employer of the author.

These problems arise, beneath a lot of advantages, from the model of business process management which developed within the last few years. This model gets more and more implemented to the larger industry enterprises and make new and great demands on executive work. Business process management models contains, beside the traditional economic aim constructions, the integrated management system which unites environment, quality and work safety as aims in itself. To draw one's attention to the changes which arise by the business process management on traditional ideas, the integrated management system was chosen as a title of this work.

It is not the aim to write again a new essay, in addition to the hundreds of already existing ones, about business ethics or leadership. It is all about a special perspective. In detail, the scientific question and the goal of this work is to represent the requirements for executives on lower and middle management levels, which arise on the one hand from the integrated management system and on the other hand from the changed expectation attitude in society and, finally, to develop based on both of them a practice-oriented solution, with which these requirements can be met.

To guarantee the validity of the work, it is at first necessary to get a short idea about the historical development to business process management in order to define the surrounding, in which this work is moving. This is carried out in chapter 1.

Secondly in chapter 2 is discussed, whether the behaviour of an executive must be penetrated by an ethical-moral basic understanding to do justice to not only the expectations of the interaction partners like customers, capital givers, supervisors and employees but also to be successful overall in the long run. Even if already more than 400 books have dealt with business ethics, the integration of these theories into the professional practice of executives in a business process management on the basis of a scientific approach is missing. So that the thesis enters new ground from this point of view.

After the definition of the business surrounding and general expectations towards the behaviour, the special relevant requirements which exists besides the known traditional economic aims on the basis of three relevant standards of quality, environment and safety and which apply to each executive in a business process management respectively in an integrated management system will be worked out thirdly in chapter 3. Fourthly, on the basis of the general ethical-moral expectations towards actions on the one hand and the concrete requirements from the standards on the other hand arise subsequently in chapter 4 the guidelines for the behaviour of the executive in dealing with the led, to do justice similarly to all requirements around. There is a special relevance of this work for several reasons. The possibly most important is, that in technically oriented enterprises engineers are frequently moved up in leading positions, which stands out both due to a high specialized knowledge and lacking leadership qualities in dealing with people and all this straight against the background of the increasing complexity of executive duties.

Table of Contents:

Text Sample:

Chapter 3, Second requirement to leadership: IMS for the lower and middle management:

The standards:

The ISO has worked out international valid process standards to which an organization can be audited if it wants to have an according certification. In case of certification, a minimum system of quality or safety or environmental protection is reliably granted. Even if the participation is voluntary, nowadays nearly every customer requires certification according to the standards which are relevant in the integrated management system to be sure to be delivered with products, which are of the expected quality and do not pollute the environment. The audit according to the standards gets therefore a duty to stay in the global competition.

The respectively valid standards form the base of an integrated management system. This work is based on the EN ISO 9001:2000 for the quality management, the EN ISO 14001:2004 for the environmental management and the OHSAS 18001:1999 for the work safety management. The OHSAS isn't an international ISO norm but a British, nevertheless companies could get a worldwide certification according to. OHSAS should be the frame of any work safety management only because it is of the same composition like the two other IS standards and so all three aims can be realized without greater friction losses and redundancies in the business process management. One example of same content is the methodology known as ‘Plan-Do-Check-Act’, which can be applied to all processes, no matter if quality, environment or safety is concerned. Each person in a leadership position should consider this methodology for his work procedures. The ISO 9001 for example requires structured procedures.

In the further progress of the work, this is to be further investigated. The Series ‘1” of the standards (e.g. 9001) represents a minimum demand. An enterprise can, when required, go beyond it and use the Series ‘4’ (e.g. 9004) as a base. The Series with the end-number ‘1’, representing the minimum requirements, shall be enough for the purpose of this thesis against the background of an approach.

To confine the mentioned standards from the values and standards in the philosophical sense, they are summarized in this work under the concept of ISOstandards and even if the OHSAS norm isn't an ISO norm, this is included analogously also.

Another important aspect is the integrating function of environment, quality and work safety. Even if the standards require an employee engaged by the management, every single executive can and may not withdraw of the tasks connected to the integrated management system since the representative does not know all processes in every detail and can't be everywhere. This is required explicitly by the ISO 14001, whereas it makes sense that this is not only restricted to the environmental management system but on all areas of the integrated management system: ‘The successful implementation of an environmental management system calls for a commitment from all persons working for the organization or on its behalf. Environmental roles and responsibilities therefore should not be seen as confined to the environmental management function, but can also cover other areas of an organization, such as operational management or staff functions other than Environmental’. In the following according to this thesis, only these aspects are worked out from the ISO-standards which are of relevance for the daily work of every executive, either those which weren't engaged directly by the management to this kind of tasks.