General electric
General Electric (GE) is a multinational corporation that started in New York. GE is ranked by Forbes as the second largest global company. The ranking is based on comparisons of total sales, market value, assets and profits of multinational firms. General Electric‘s expansion into consumer appliances in the interwar period had, by the 1940s and 1950s, brought to positions of strategic control managers who had acquired little understanding of the electrical engineering businesses, or of related technologies generated by GE Research Laboratories, which had been the foundations of the company's sustained competitive successes. Yet problems that GE faced in the 1960s and 1970s manifested by its failure in a number of new businesses, including semiconductors, computers, and factory automation, reflected an organization that could no longer integrate strategy and learning (Curtis, 2003). Although GE's top managers claimed to be decentralizing authority within the company, what they actually decentralized was responsibility for divisional or departmental performance, while keeping strategic authority and control in the head office. What happened to GE in the post-World War II decades happened as well to other US industrial enterprises. Whereas GE had entered the new businesses in which it competed after the war by relying to a considerable extent on internally developed capabilities, albeit with plenty of support from the US federal government, expansion through external acquisition proved the more common route to rapid corporate growth in post-war corporate America (O'Sullivan, 2001). General Electric is being criticized for the environmental pollution it creates. This paper intends to create a project for GE’s waste management of toxic materials.
Toxic waste management project
The project will focus on improving the toxic waste management of GE. The projects want to make sure that accusations of mismanagement of toxic waste and pollution would minimize. Through the project, GE would have a better image with the environmentalists and the global environment. It is tempting to think of hazardous waste as another form of pollution, like air or water pollution. The effects of hazardous waste on the environment depend on the way it is managed, whether through recycling, treatment, or disposal. Waste management includes three general categories of activities: disposal, treatment, and recycling. Facilities can dispose of waste on land, typically by placing it in landfills or injecting it into deep underground wells. They also can treat waste by using chemical processes that vary with the kind of waste. For example, treatment can render waste inert through vitrification, a process that converts waste to a glasslike substance. Few treatments avoid the need to dispose of some residuals later, but they may result in a waste product that is less toxic or less mobile than the pretreated substance. Facilities can avoid disposal by reusing organic waste as fuel or by recycling some hazardous waste, especially waste that contains metals and spent solvents. Hazardous waste management is of great concern in view of the risks associated with such activities. (Pellow, Schnaiberg & Weinberg, 2000).
Apart from its immediate and direct health and environmental threats, hazardous waste disposal could lead to the long-term contamination of the ambient air, soils, surface and ground waters, and the food-chain, if disposal facilities are not well designed and maintained (Asante-Duah & Nagy, 1998). Increasing concern has emerged over the threat posed by the several contaminated sites present in numerous countries, originating from the poor management of hazardous wastes. Until recently only a few countries had established programs for systematically developing inventories of contaminated sites and their potential risks. This is because building inventories of sites and establishing monitoring networks are expensive. This is especially true for situations in Central and Eastern Europe and even more so in the case of developing countries, where there is a need to provide technical and economic assistance to facilitate an assessment of the potential threats from past hazardous waste management practices. Huge sums of money are currently being spent for the clean-up of sites contaminated from hazardous wastes (Dunlap, Kraft & Rosa, 2003). Any trans boundary movements of wastes across national borders may be viewed as constituting a form of waste trade. Increasing waste quantities from industrial activities, coupled with limited disposal options and tightening environmental regulations, have generally fostered this new kind of trade on the global market-place. This type of trade activity has been taking place between the North and the South and between the East and the West within the international communities. Of particular concerns are the activities that involve the export of toxic wastes from some industrialized nations to certain developing and newly industrializing regions. In any case, the potential risks due to the waste trade activities should be adequately assessed so that sovereign countries can make effective trade decisions regarding development programs that may include waste trade schemes. The potential health risks, environmental impacts and long-term implications arising from a waste trade activity may exceed the short-term economic gains by several orders of magnitude (Portney & Stavins, 2000).
Goals and objectives of the project
Scope
The project would cover analyzing and changing the current toxic waste management practice of GE. The project would only use available current systems to manage toxic wastes. The project cannot go beyond what is available in the market and what will cost much. The amount of hazardous wastes is believed to have increased accordingly. Faced with the problem of disposal, holders of hazardous wastes have in recent years increasingly chosen the option of exporting them to an area outside the jurisdiction of the state in which they were generated, either for further treatment or disposal in another country, or for dumping or incineration at sea. The practice of shipping hazardous wastes over long distances for disposal far from the place of generation constitutes a serious threat to human health and the environment. In general, the problem of hazardous wastes is still largely a problem of the industrialized world, which currently generates over 90 per cent of all hazardous wastes. This may however change in the not too distant future. The difficulty lies not only in the elusiveness of the hazardous waste trade, but also in the diversity of situations to be taken into account. The problem is rendered more complex by the absence of sufficiently detailed, universally agreed definitions of important concepts, namely those of hazardous wastes and recycling or recovery operations (Kummer, 2004).
Organizational structure of the project team
The project team will be composed of eleven members. One will be assigned to lead the group. The leader would be from either the management team of GE or someone who deserves to lead the group. The leader would facilitate the process and would make sure that everyone works for the achievement of the goals. The leader would be given full power but full accountability. Five people would come from the research and development division of GE. They would be assigned to research on current waste management system. Five people would come from the waste management division of GE. They would give an analysis of the reasons why the waste management system was not successful. The people from the waste management division of GE would give their ideas on the potential problems they might face with the project. Together the eleven individuals would determine how the waste management system can be improved. The mode of organization is in part determined by the elements of purpose. The purpose dictates the method of distribution and execution of problem-solving, decision-making, and action functions. In turn, the distribution of these functions and the assignment of authority and responsibility to go with them define the formal structure of the organization. The purpose of an organization may be an important determinant of the way in which the organization is structured (Shell, 2003). While an organization is a formal structure of positions operated according to the logics just described, it is also an adaptive social system. The organization is a set of formal relationships that can be manipulated in the interest of efficiency and effectiveness but is necessarily affected by conditions within its structure The possibility of manipulating the formal system depends upon the extent to which the organization provides effective motivation to participants and conditions under which stability of relationships can be assured (Olmstead, 2002).Formal systems cannot be divorced from motivation and social relationships even within the most highly structured organizations. Since an organization consists of individuals interacting within a formal system of coordination, it is the result of both formal and informal reciprocal influences (Thompson, 2003). The persons in the system are conceived as having various motivations and attitudes and as performing certain activities in certain ways. The problem of structure is a recurring theme in organizational theory. All organizations have to provide for the meshing of members’ activities. Tasks must be allocated, authority must be assigned, and functions must be coordinated. These requirements lead to development of a hierarchical framework that is called the structure of the organization. The way that the persons are arranged in relation to each other and to the task is the structure of the organization. The persons in the system were conceived as having various motivations and attitudes and as performing certain activities in certain ways. The ways in which they performed the activities were determined by their proficiency, by their motivations, and by how they perceived the organization, other members, themselves, and their roles (Tropman, 1998).
Research/Budgeting
Research would focus on determining successful waste management systems and choosing which system fits GE and which system will benefit the company. The budget for the project will be $100,000. Expenditures would be made on the transportation of the team, research expenses, purchase of equipment and technologies and other miscellaneous expenses. The leader of the team would be the one that would take care of the budget. The administration of environmental programs, just like any other public program, is a human process where individuals and groups interact and work toward achieving certain collective and organizational objectives or values (Henning & Mangun, 1999). Politics and public administration are intertwined in the struggle for power to affect governmental policies. Every policy decision in the public sector is a product of individual or group judgment through the political process. Regardless of their areas of responsibility or clientele, public organizations and personnel must operate in a highly political environment influenced by regionally or nationally dominant cultures. Management of a specific natural resource at a given time and place involves a Complex of interrelations that has the capacity to influence the environment in the present or the future. In environmental administration, concerns must extend to future as well as present generations (Chalmers & Scott, 2003).
Complex values difficult to identify and predict for future generations must be encompassed in judgments and decisions made in the present. The depletion of nonrenewable resources in the present, for example, can affect the quality of human life and the survival potential of living things and systems in the future. Environmental decisions made in the present can constrict or eliminate future options. An endangered species that is eliminated today may have been the crucial link for medical research tomorrow. The aim of waste management is the safe disposal of waste without causing harm to the environment. This requires the separation of hazardous from non-hazardous waste and a thorough understanding of the consequences and implications of the various methods of disposal. For instance, sites should be selected with regard to geological conditions so as to prevent problems. Care is also needed when operating such a site so as to minimize the production of methane gas during the process of material breakdown. Care should be exercised in the location of incinerators and appropriate technology employed so as to avoid the release of toxic substances into the atmosphere While the preference among regulatory bodies is still for cooperation and negotiation, most of the states have improved the funding of their regulatory bodies and there appears to be a greater willingness to use prosecution as an enforcement strategy (Sullivan & Wyndham, 2001).
Scheduling
The proposed project will involve five stages. The first stage involves the gathering of current waste management systems and analyzing the current waste management system of the company. The first stage would focus on making plans for the project and determining the scope of the project. The first stage would also help in introducing the team members with each other. During this time the team would start adjusting to each other’s habits and characteristics. This stage will be done in three weeks. The second stage will focus on analyzing which of the available waste management system should be used by the company. In this stage the team would determine the most viable waste management system. The second stage will be used to determine and gather the materials needed, the funds that will be used and determining the possible effect. This stage will be done in a month. The third stage will focus on starting the change in the waste management system. In this stage all resources have been gathered and the new waste management system would be implemented. In this stage the old system would be replaced by the newer waste management system. This stage will be done in six months. It will take a longer time because many changes would be done and there would be counter actions from within and outside the organizations. Implementation would take more time because of the possible reaction from the environment and the budgetary constraints of the company. The fourth stage will focus on controlling and evaluating the new system. This will take two weeks. The fourth stage will only start once the new waste management system is fully operational. The fourth stage will focus on evaluating the benefits of the new waste management system.
Gantt chart for the project
Performance
The performance of the new waste management system would be analyzed based on the change in the image of the company. The performance of the new waste management system would also be analyzed based on how it prevents pollution. Effective performance appraisal depends upon well-defined standards of accomplishment that are measured in accordance with a systematic approach that eliminates subjectivity. Performance appraisals are a major part of performance management programs, including the various coaching and developmental activities that take place as part of the performance management process. The fact that appraisals are so important, and yet so prone to problems, goes far to explain why performance appraisal has been the focus of so much research activity for so long a period of time.
Evaluation
Evaluation would focus on how the project and the new waste management system affected the company’s operations. Evaluation would look at how the new waste management system made the firm environment friendly. It would analyze how pollution was minimized after the new system is introduced. Evaluation would look at the problems acquired once the new waste management system is used. It would analyze the issues the company is facing after the introduction of the new management system. Evaluation would look at the comments and reactions of the external environment and the people involved in protecting the environment. It would analyze the image of the company.
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