Healthcare organizations are among the world’s largest and fastest growing, contributing to a massive part of a country’s economy. Both public and private healthcare organizations have to deal with an unstable environment due to various forces such as rapid transformation of technology, demographic factors, and change of lifestyle. These factors require that a firm’s organizational structure be suited to its demands, further enabling progress. An analysis of a healthcare organization’s structure shows that it is highly centralized, negatively influencing lines of communication and reporting, in spite of incorporating socio-cultural differences into the provision of care.
Type of Organizational Structure
Organizational structure describes an organization’s formal reporting relationship, allocation of responsibility, as well as procedures that are carried out among organizational members. The term also indicates a continuing arrangement of organizational tasks and activities. Hence, it is important to note that work organization is a key factor that influences the productivity of the organization as it is the basis that determines how employees work (Yasavoli, Salajeghe, Shekari, & Sheikhi, 2019). Broadly speaking, organizational structure is mainly important for decision-making process because it includes the characteristics of authority.
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In this case, the organizational structure is highly centralized, hindering creativity and the rapid adjustment to changes. There are three most important aspects in organizational structure comprised of centralization, formalization, and integration (Agnihotri, & Bhattacharya, 2018). Centralization refers to the concentration of management and power of decision-making process at the top of an organization’s hierarchy. An organization with high centralization, such as for our case tends, to restrain interactions among the organizational members, hinder inventive solutions to problems, and diminish the opportunity for individual development. Centralization is highly related to the decision-making power by the top management of the organization (Fitria, Mukhtar, & Akbar, 2017). Therefore, it provides little delegation of decision-making power to the employees, causing a non-participatory environment that reduces communication as well as task involvement among employees.
Lines of Communication and Reporting
The main executive in this firm controls its formal communication. Formal communication within a centralized organizational structure can be said to be integration of official positions within one explicit organizational structure. In this case, each position or office is under the control and supervision of a higher one. On the other hand, informal communication can be defined as person-dependent social relationship of dominance and subordination which emerges from social interactions and become persistent over time through repeated social processes. In this organization, the highly centralized structure prevents informal reporting lines as executive leaders control communication from the top.
Limited social interactions negatively affect the firm’s relations among employees. All positions are placed along social lines of top-down command. Formal authority is closely related with the ranking and prestige of positions and independent from the actual holder of the position. Nonetheless, it is not only functional aspects, operations, and tasks which are organized hierarchically but also and probably primarily, social relations. People are put in unequal relations to each other via anonymous or abstract orders. Personal independent rules create a stratified system of social positions for individuals. In return, vertical and unequal social relationships are sanctioned, legitimized, and made permanent by the prevailing rules and regulations as well as social actions.
Social and Cultural Influences of Community
Socio-cultural influences of community are integrated into the organization’s delivery of care in various ways. Socio-cultural environments shape peoples’ psychology regarding health and illness Health provision is determined by several socio-cultural factors including genetics, personal behaviors, general external environments, and lack of access to medical care. Thus, new models of well-being and care are occasionally identified and nourished across socio-cultures. Building trust in health is prioritized as a socio-cultural value, and exported and imported practice services are aligned with local cultural and social meaning.
How Generational Differences Influence Organizational Culture
Generational difference and growth help in shifting the culture of an organization. Each and every other generation comes with changed and varied habits, ethics, and communication skills. For instance, the firm is currently integrating social media into communication practices, that may gradually shift its centralized approach to one that is more inclusive. To keep up with these changes, the organization derives training programs about culture and diversity which teach a wide variety of programs addressing issues of cultural sensitivity. At the core of these programs people are taught about not only the characteristics of different cultures but also how to be sensitive of different generations.
The Organization’s Mission, Vision and Strategic Plan
The firm’s vision is to be among best health center in the world in medication, medical education, research, and patient care. Its mission is to ‘Discover. Teach. Heal.’ The firm hopes to achieve this by providing compassionate, patient centered care through relationship-based primary care. The firm will also foster the professional advancement of nursing by providing organizational support for certification and education. Moreover, it will provide the research infrastructure and increase resources available to support high quality research, and cultivate the next generation of institutional leadership. In the future, the firm hopes to provide high quality, accessible, patient centered care, identify and promote nursing research strength, foster professional development, establish strong, consistent and committed leadership; and create a culture of philanthropy
How Nursing Fits
Nursing at the organization believes that supportive, facilitative, and safe work environments promote individual and organizational success and that the quality of the places where nurses work is intimately tied to the quality of the care provided. To achieve ideal work settings, nurses at all levels must be committed to a lifelong process of active learning, knowledge utilization, and identifying the best approaches to delivery of care and successful interaction with others (Berkhout et al., 2018). Nursing also recognizes the importance of an organizational structure and processes that support individual efforts and that recognizes and rewards excellence through a variety of processes and approaches. To achieve this, however, the organizational structure should support social interactions and communication among employees, as well as the occasional sharing of ideas from the bottom level going up.
References
Agnihotri, A., & Bhattacharya, S. (2018). International acquisitions and emerging market firms'
performance—a structural contingency perspective. Thunderbird International Business Review , 60 (4), 691-698.
Berkhout, J. J., Helmich, E., Teunissen, P. W., van der Vleuten, C. P., & Jaarsma, A. D. C.
(2018). Context matters when striving to promote active and lifelong learning in medical education. Medical education , 52 (1), 34-44.
Fitria, H., Mukhtar, M., & Akbar, M. (2017). The Effect of Organizational Structure And
Leadership Style on Teacher Performance In Private Secondary School. IJHCM (International Journal of Human Capital Management) , 1 (02), 101-112.
Yasavoli, A. R., Salajeghe, S., Shekari, G. A., & Sheikhi, A. (2019). The Relationship between
Organizational Culture and Productivity Effects in Hospitals of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences. Journal of North Khorasan University of Medical Sciences , 10 (4), 40-44.
