Organizational sustaining systems

8 Dan Petersen, The Four Cs of Safety Culture, Competency, Consequences and Continuous Improvement, Professional Safety (April 1998), pp. 32-34 

The systems that are necessary to sustain excellent performance include  

For brevity s sake we sometimes use systems to refer both to safety-enabling elements and to organizational sustaining systems. Much current patient safety activity is focused at the level of these systems. Our (unpublished) survey of the May 2006 activity in the Patient Safety Discussion Forum, an Internet newsgroup sponsored by the National Patient Safety Foundation, revealed that almost 90% of the forum s discussion threads dealt with systems issues. The task of addressing systems issues can be safely delegated provided the 

9 Available since February 1999 at http //listserv.npsf.org/. 

10 To whom they should be delegated is a tactical implementation decision, which we will discuss in chapter 9. 

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Krause is also the author of Leading with Safety, published in 2005, in which he writes of leadership, organizational sustaining systems, safety-enabling systems, organizational culture, and the working interface. The latter is described as the interaction of equipment, facilities, procedures, and the worker. Krause also says that a combination of these factors creates or eliminates exposures to hazards. Remember, Krause has been a major player in worker-focused behavior-based safety. And he now writes this ... 

Healthcare safety-enabling elements and organizational sustaining systems will be aligned with safety as a strategic priority. 

How might a firm induce scalable structuration for sustained growth The processes a firm employs to harness inert resources are clearly inadequate to induce scalable structuration. A different set of organizational structures, systems, and processes is required (Galbraith... 

Realign systems, both healthcare safety-enabling and organizational sustaining. 

OE is an attribute of organizational leadership that stresses the application of a variety of principles, multiple inter-organizational management systems, and tools toward the sustainable improvement of all operations. Effectiveness is often tracked through the use of key performance indices (KPIs). The process involves focusing on customer needs, keeping employees positive and empowered and continuous improvement of activities in the workplace. 

Viewing a QMS in this context is beneficial to organizational leadership and management responsible for the system. It puts into perspective the overall effect on an organization that is achievable by individual processes alone and what can be achieved and sustained through active management and the interaction between those processes. 

Good quality sustainability reports provide the reader with contextual information on the company, its products and services, and its business lines and facilities. They also provide information on corporate policies, organizational structure, and management systems. While each company determines the specific issue areas to cover within its report (based on their significance to the company and its stakeholders), the following columns identify the types of issues that a number of companies are addressing in their reports. 

I created the inclusion equation to help depict the interrelated variables necessary to create and sustain inclusive cultures (see Figure 7.1). There are two broad components of the inclusion model it depicts macro and micro inclusion practices. The two macro aspects focus on organizational culture and organizational systems. At the micro level, the model identifies individual cultural competence and emotional intelligence as the two core requirements to create and sustain inclusion. The components of the model are interdependent and work synergistically. When any one aspect is weak or absent, it severely inhibits the ability of an organization to effectively practice inclusion. 

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