Case Scenario:
Let’s Go Green
Monica is the CEO of a regional chain of hospitals and clinics that includes several thousand employees. The medical facilities continue to grow as insurance companies are eager to form partnerships with relatively low-cost suppliers and the population ages. Monica has been thinking lately that medical facilities have not been as aggressive as manufacturing companies in pushing for environment sustainability. In her words, “Medical facilities could be a lot greener than they are. Obviously we don’t throw contaminated bandages and body parts into the river, but we could still do a lot more. I think that we need to get more of our leaders and regular employees thinking green.
The following week, Monica worked with her administrative assistance. Hillary, to come up with a list of suggestion that hospital and clinic managers, supervisors, and employees could implement to help create a greener environment. Monica believes strongly that only collective action can create a sustainable environment, meaning that all employees can help make medical facilities more environmentally friendly. She then sent an e-mail to every employee with a work a work e-mail address making suggestion for creating a greener environment. Monica also explained that the hospital had established a central budget to help fund some of the green initiatives. Her suggestions for helping the hospitals and clinics contribute to a sustainable environment contained 25 suggestions, including the followingsix:
• Conserve energy by adjusting thermostats to keep working areas cooler during cold months and warmer during warm months.
• Encourage patients to conserve on the use of towels because laundering towels consumes so much energy.
• Encourage visitors to hospitals and clinics to not waste so much gas circling around the parking lots to find a spot close to the medical facility. Our patients and their family members are spewing too much carbon dioxide into their air because they want to minimize walking.
• Encourage employee use of mass transportation in any locations where it is feasible.
• Use mugs instead of Styrofoam, and set up bins to recycle aluminum cans plastics bottles.
• Create signs that say “Think Before You Print” and post them near office printers and copy machines. At the same time include under your e-mail signature a line that encourages people not to print e-mails unless absolutely necessary.
Among the first replies from her mass-distributed e-mail were, “Thanks. If we follow your advice we will soon be one of the greenest health care chains in the country,” and “Nice idea, but our staff is already so overworked I doubt we can work on the environment.”
Questions:
1. What do you think of the effectiveness of Monica’s leadership in sending an e-mail message to encourage environmental sustainability?
2. What other leadership technique might Monica use to help prompt the hospitals and clinics toward sustainability?
3. Help CEO Monica by stating a vision to cover her efforts toward sustainability.