Organisational maturity

Although the Safety Management System (and the Safety Management Organisation in place to deliver it) and safety cirlture are intrinsically linked, the two are addressed separately below simply for the sake of clarity. The chapter concludes with a short introduction to the notions of organisational maturity and high reliability organisations . These concepts show how selected companies in other domains have addressed similar issues. 

In the OE of jawed fish only cellular, and little if any, tissue specialisation is achieved. During metamorphosis from tadpole to adult in amphibia, a developmental parallel of water-to-land transition includes the timing of maturation of the AOS. The system as it appears in living amphibians, is already a more or less discrete entity (Fig. 4.3) with its own sub-set of receptors. A process of regionalisation within the bulb, already underway even at the level of organisation in cartilaginous fishes, shows parallel adjustments (Dryer and Graziadei, 1993). 

A pre-organisation period (in which the first replicating systems evolved) and The maturation period (in which the first bacterium evolved from the first replication system). 

In 1992, the International Organisation for Standardisation established a technical committee on Environmental Management (TC207) to develop a series of standards on environmental management. This was subsequently published as the IS014000 series of standards. Although this is a field that is rapidly maturing, LCA has been criticized on a number of points. 

Predictions by several fuel cell organisations for incomplete systems are not in unison, but all see economic improvements coming from mass production, notably ITM. That will be very necessary to meet the intense competition as improved vehicles with new engine schemes enter the market. The industry needs complete fuel cells to achieve competitive performance and any kind of mature economics. The difficulty of the situation is highlighted by the fuel cell bus which saves local pollution on the road, but generates at the power plant stack more pollution... 

Fig. 9.5. Organisation of the gene for type 11 procollagen from the domestic fowl (Upholt Sandell. 1986). The gene comprises 46 exons. Exons 5 to 46 and part of exon 4 encode a strand of the triple helix present in mature collagen. Exons 3 and 2 and parts of exons 1 and 4 encode the region of procollagen that is excised before its secretion to form the collagen matrix.

Versions of the ORACLE and INGRES RDBMSs have been announced for distributed use. These will utilise PCs, workstations, or mini/mainframes as nodes. Work done at the University of California, Berkeley on the academic version of INGRES is indicative of the features of these RDBMS s. A user may submit a query at his node that requests information that is distributed over several other nodes. The retrieval algorithm polls the nodes for availability, optimises the query for retrieval speed, and retrieves the requested data across the network. When mature, this technology should be useful in chemical/pharmaceutical companies that are multidepartment, multisite, and multinational organisations. 

A recent cytochemical study by Waterkeyn (1981) has shown that callose always forms the innermost layer of the secondary wall of cotton fibre cells, just outside the plasmalemma. Hence the deposition of cellulose must occur outside this layer and cellulose molecules must either pass through it, or be constructed at its outer edge. No evidence was obtained to show whether the callose was or was not converted into cellulose, but Waterkeyn favoured the view that callose represents a permanently restored interface across which cellulose molecules are matured and organised to form the secondary wall. A careful distinction was drawn between the physiological and traumatic depositions of callose and there is, indeed, no evidence that the two processes are very closely related. 

All four steps are underpinned by supporting procedures (which should be mature in any approved Design Organisation) for ... 

If we assume that the Design Organisation has mature Process Assurance and Configuration Management procedures (i.e., not project specific), then with reference to Section 9.2.1 the following high-level plans are required in Step 1 ... 

The measurement and purpose paradoxes are in themselves indicators of cultural maturity. Healthcare organisations which do not exhibit these paradoxes may be more mature than those that do. 

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