THE NASA COMPLIANCE FORMULA
What can be more inspiring than a visit to the Kennedy Space Centre? You can see classic spaceships, listen to the stories of real astronauts and even feel the gravity-forces of a space shuttle launch. A formula developed by NASA to analyse accountability can even support and inspire corporate ethics and compliance systems.
At the 2009 NASA Masters Forum, the space agency anticipated the imminent retirement of their space shuttle. The agency dedicated the event to the exchange of experience and lessons learned from the development and operation of the space shuttle programme. Bryan O’Connor, a former astronaut who was later responsible for safety and mission assurance at NASA, used his timeslot at the event to discuss safety. He presented the formula: Accountability = Responsibility x Authority x Capability.
For all companies and organisations, safety for clients, employees and other stakeholders should be their number one priority. Corporate environmental, health and safety (EHS) programmes have a similar vision to ethics and compliance systems; the focus is often on prevention and offering protection to employees, organisations and society at large. To achieve this, a formula which can define accountability for safety should also be capable of doing the same for compliance.
Accountability and responsibility are similar concepts and are often not clearly divided. The Roman languages do not even have a separate word for accountability; instead it directly translates to responsibilidad in Spanish, responsibilidade in Portuguese and responsabilità in Italian.
Jan-Mar 2020 Issue
Patrick Henz