OSH 7302 Response

Response posts to two classmates: Includes at least two substantive responses that each include at least 1 scholarly, professional, or textbook reference with accompanying in-text-citation to support any paraphrased, summarized, or quoted material.

While we prefer not to assign word counts to posts, as a suggested best practice, at least two responses should be at least 200 words. 

1) Jessica Blocher: I chose KCFD as the organization to evaluate any listed mission, values, and vision statements on the department website. The website lists several examples of values, vision, and overall mission for the department.

KCFD's central values are listed as (a) "Pride in our profession", (b) "Honor for our heritage and traditions", (c) "Courage to accept any challenge", and (d) "Commitment to personal service in every encounter we make" (KCMO.gov., n.d.). One of the traditions KCFD cites is "building strong relationships with the community" (KCMO.gov., n.d.). The Public Relations Office has a personal mission to "provide information to the general public in a timely and accurate fashion" (KCMO.gov., n.d.). KCMO.gov (n.d.) also states "the Department stands committed to deliver their very best with each opportunity to serve".

Mission statements are used by all types of organizations as a strategic communication tool to identify the organization's purpose, values, standards, and strategy (Cortes, 2022). KCMO.gov has values listed in different places of the website but does not have a central location where the mission statement is located. Overall, the value statements sound good. They list what is important to the core of the Department but do so without identifying specific examples of how they uphold the values. KCFD could improve the statements by having them listed in a designated place with some recent examples of how they are upholding those values.

Looking into this has left me wondering, what is the mission of KCFD? Is it to "deliver their very best"? And if so, what does that look like? I would like one of you to go to the KCMO.gov website and find KCFD. Read the site and imagine you are a citizen trying to determine what is KCFD's mission to you. Can you determine their values, mission, and vision based on what is provided? You can also use your own public service agency, what do you expect from them based on their mission statement? Do they provide that to you as a citizen?

Reference

Cortés, J. D. (2022). What is the mission of innovation?—Lexical structure, sentiment analysis, and cosine similarity of mission statements of research-knowledge intensive institutions. PLoS ONE, 17(8), 1–20. https://doi-org.libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/10.1371/journal.pone.0267454

KCMO.gov. (n.d.). Kansas City Missouri Fire Department. https://www.kcmo.gov/city-hall/departments/fire