ALMA E-News for February 2002
Greetings ALMA Members,
Almost every lab must deal with the myriad of rules and regulations for the handling of chemicals and disposal of wastes. Most of the regulations for assessing the risk associated with the various types of wastes and the accepted methods for dealing with them are promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency but there may also be local or state regulations as well. Waste is generally defined as excess, unneeded, or unwanted materials with chemical waste further characterized as ignitable, corrosive, reactive, or toxic. It is the responsibility of the lab to determine the degree of hazard associated with each type of waste and to develop a system to manage compliance. I recently found a laboratory EPA self audit tool on the University of California Riverside website (www.ehs.ucr.edu/epa/) to assist the manager in evaluating the effectiveness of the laboratory's system to fulfill these requirements. This checklist can be downloaded in Adobe Acrobat format and also contains brief explanations of the definitions and requirements-check it out.
Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince is one of the most famous (or infamous) works on political thought in Western literature. This early sixteenth century treatise describes a practical philosophy of government based upon the author’s experiences and observations of human behavior and is written as a “how to govern” for new princes in the Italian city-states of that time. The advice is notable for its complete lack of moral considerations with the sole objective being the survival and prosperity of the prince. No act was considered too vile or corrupt to justify this end. Machiavelli advised the prince to destroy those who might oppose him, to build political alliances of convenience, to instill fear (but not hatred) in those whom he rules, to maintain the appearance of virtue while hiding his true actions, to delegate unpopular tasks to subordinates to transfer blame, to play one faction against another, to placate those who can harm while exploiting those less powerful, etc. It is interesting that Machiavelli’s work has been used as the basis of a number of management models over the past few decades that claim to provide an effective blueprint to a successful management career. However, the goal of success can blind us to the morality of our actions as illustrated by what we have heard and read about the Enron debacle —was this not an example of classic Machiavellian leadership style? As managers, we must guard against focusing solely on results while ignoring the consequences of our actions; we are always obliged to ask the question “Is this the right thing to do?” The end does not always justify the means.
For anyone interested, past ALMA e-News editions are now available on our website at www.labmanagers.org/resources/enews/.
If you have any comments, cost saving suggestions, opinions, etc. let me hear from you .
Wayne