Door: Roel Wagter
In mijn rol als copromotor en gastdocent aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen begeleid ik via de Faculteit der Natuurwetenschappen, Wiskunde en Informatica jaarlijks een aantal studenten. Na mijn college over ‘sturen op samenhang’ ontvangen de betreffende studenten de opdracht om naar keuze een jaarverslag van een onderneming te downloaden en de samenhang op zingevingsniveau van deze onderneming te onderzoeken en te waarderen. Voor alle duidelijkheid, het betreft hier tussentijdse studieresultaten in de vorm van een op te leveren paper. De komende tijd zal ik, overigens met toestemming van de betreffende studenten en de universiteit een aantal van deze papers publiceren. Dit doe ik in de hoop opdat velen deze exercitie zullen navolgen. Immers een goed niveau van samenhang is randvoorwaardelijk voor een hoog reactievermogen, hoge aanpasbaarheid en het bereiken van de beoogde performance. En het sturen op samenhang begint met het sturen op samenhang op zingevingsniveau. Te weten de samenhang tussen de missie, visie, kernwaarden, doelen en strategie. Voor een ieder die meer wil weten over ‘sturen op samenhang’ zie ons laatstelijk gepubliceerde boek .
De onderzoeksopdracht
De onderzoeksopdracht zoals omschreven in de inleiding heeft bij student Rico Janssen er toe geleid de samenhang op zingevingsniveau van Waterschapsbedrijf Limburg te onderzoeken.
In deze blog geef ik onderstaand alleen het abstract en de intro van zijn paper weer en verwijs graag naar de versie van het volledige paper.
Abstract and Intro van:
Enterprise Coherence at WBL ( Rico Janssen, September 2021)
Abstract
In this paper, we describe coherence at Waterschapsbedrijf Limburg (WBL). WBL is responsible for cleaning and transporting wastewater in Limburg. The infrastructure that WBL manages consists of 17 water waste plants, approximately 150 pumps and more than 500 kilometres of pipelines across Limburg. These assets are WBL’s main capital. A payable and durable infrastructure is required to support the needs of the society.
Delivering quality of water is WBL’s primary goal. WBL has the ambition to be the most impressive water company in The Netherlands, which it tries to achieve using creativity, innovation and high performance. Where durability and cost efficiency are important aspects. This ambition is more explicitly captured in the organisational mission and vision. WBL’s mission is:
“Get as much out of water as possible. We give purified water and the residue a new destination, resulting in making a fundamental difference in society and ecosystem.”
For the longer term, WBL has the following vision:
“We strive to make the world around us healthier and more sustainable by purifying water. We offer the best working environment for people who share this passion, and together we provide our chain partners unprecedented added value.”
The Enterprise Coherence Framework (ECF) describes coherence using cohesive elements. The ECF supports organisations in defining the purposes of their business. The mission and vision are two essential factors. The framework consists of two levels, i.e. the level of purpose and the level of design. We have limited the scope of this research to the level of purpose. The level of purpose contains five cohesive elements; mission, vision, core values, goals, and strategy. Depending on the organisational structure, enterprises can apply this framework to each division or the entire organisation.
This research has pointed out that there is a reasonable degree of coherence between the cohesive elements at WBL. However, while doing this research, some interesting business strategies showed up. Instead of having one business strategy, WBL uses three different business strategies. Each sector within the organisation has its business strategy. Sector Operation & Maintenance uses the Operational Excellence strategy, Sector Strategy & innovation uses Product Leadership, and sector Business Support uses the Customer Intimacy strategy. These strategies can be related to the goals and core values and eventually the mission and vision.
Introduction
In this paper, we first introduced in chapter 2 the Enterprise Coherence Framework (ECF). The ECF defines a series of cohesive elements, and cohesive relationships [8]. These elements and relations together define the playing field for an enterprise. Depending on the organisational structure, this framework can be applied to each division or the entire organisation. The framework also considers business alliances and can be defined recursively. The framework can, for example, be used to determine the information security (IS) strategy, then recursively, the actions in the field can be described in the technical infrastructure. This creates a hierarchical structure where each level has its cohesive elements.
Enterprise Coherence can be described at the level of purpose and Design. We will explain these two levels respectively in 2.1 and 2.2. Next, we will describe in section 3 the Enterprise Coherence framework at the level of purpose for WBL. The scope is explicitly limited to the level of purpose. Note that this does not imply that it is not possible to define the enterprise coherence for WBL at the level of Design. It is just not feasible to do within the time frame of the System Approaches for Information Science course. To test if the cohesive elements at WBL are properly described, we test them using the following criteria: 1. The used strategies should not interfere with the core values and should lead to achieving the goals set. 2. The goals that are set should align with the enterprise’s core values and be consistent with the enterprise vision and, therefore, its mission. 3. The mission of the enterprise should be consistent with the core values of the enterprise.