Improving resilience and performance of organizations using environment, health and safety management systems. An empirical study in a multinational company

Abstract

This article presents and analyzes the experience of a European multinational company working in diverse infrastructure sectors on the deployment and enhancement of a new internal Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) management system. As the company works in various sectors and had a much decentralized approach to EHS management, there was a need for centralization and integration of its practices to a system that could allow the headquarters to assess, control and properly administer its processes and its people under one single management system. The new system aimed to improve the performance of the company's sites and also has shown as an effective tool to build up corporate resilience. During the deployment of the system, various industrial units presented very critical issues concerning bad EHS administration and commitment, which enabled organization to tempt its capacity to realignment of EHS management to corporate strategy on those sites. The case of one specific unit is showed here in order to illustrate the situation prior to and subsequent to the execution of an orientated action plan and implementation of the new EHS management system on site.