O’Connor, Edward J. Physician Executive Vol. 32, Issue 3, p. 76-78
The article discusses some organizational systems and structures that would support physicians executives and medical staff in implementing changes. The authors argue that traditional relics may hinder changes required in order to meet the demands of today’s environment. In order to respond effectively to these demands, health care organizations must update tools and mechanisms such as budgeting, feedback, reward/compensation, clinical guidelines, and employee selection, training and retention.
O’Connor, Edward J. & Fiol, C. Marlena Physician Executive Vol. 32, Issue 2, p. 68-69
A large, successful, multispecialty group practice held a spaghetti dinner. Physicians cooked spaghetti, served spaghetti, cleaned up and took a bit of ribbing. The people they were serving were their employees. The communication from the physicians was clear: All year long you serve us. Tonight we wish to serve you. We appreciate what you contribute. What have you done recently to express your appreciation, strengthen relationships and build the foundation for successfully influencing your people?
O’Connor, Edward J. & Fiol, C. Marlena Physician Executive Vol. 32, Issue 1, p. 72-74
Innovation is critical to long-term success in today’s health care environment. Change is accelerating, competition increasing and access to information expanding. Many health care providers try to ignore these changing demands while continuing to practice past behaviors. Others react by leaving the profession in order to avoid having to make the required adjustments. Neither strategy contributes much to generating the innovation required to effectively deliver care in today’s environment.
O’Connor, Edward J. & Fiol, C. Marlena Physician Executive Vol. 32, Issue 1, p. 18-33
The article presents information on the focused entrepreneurial thinking to provide quality medical care and strong financial health. Entrepreneurial focus is the key ingredient that may mean the difference between surviving and thriving as an organization. A physician executive needs to encourage taking the steps required to ensure that one’s reward must support the organization’s people’s commitment to quality, safety, and contribution. People throughout health care organizations often do not judge the potential of values and visioning processes.
Gifford, B. and Wood, D. Advances in Healthcare Management Vol. 5, p. 101-115
Globalization of previous term health next term care services is becoming an alternative or complementary strategy for some U.S. previous termhealthnext term care organizations due to increased competition, a stagnant previous termhealthnext term care market, and nationally imposed cost constraints in the U.S. Additionally, entrepreneurial U.S. firms may see globalization as an opportunity to promote their services in new countries with increasing demand for advanced technological services. If an ambitious American previous termhealthnext term care firm decides to globalize its product or service lines, what might be some of the primary strategies it would use to enter an international market? To investigate this question, this chapter considers the strategies of two American firms that have entered the Beijing and Shanghai markets since 2000. We conducted numerous telephone conversations and interviews with executives of these firms in an attempt to understand their market entry and early development strategies. These firms’ market entry strategies range from “greenfield” operations, where the hospital does little to change its corporate and managerial style from what it uses domestically, to a “glocalization” strategy, where the firm is quite sensitive to fitting into the Chinese culture and being accepted by the Chinese government. The strategic challenges for international hospital organization developments in China are many, but the potential rewards from becoming among the leading firms in a large nation with an expanding economy are tremendous. What we learn from the experiences of enterprising American hospital firms in Chinese may well portend the future for international developments by many other American-based previous term health next term organizations.
O’Connor, Edward J. & Fiol, C. Marlena Physician Executive Vol. 31 Issue 6, pp. 64-67
The article discusses how majority of medical errors are preventable through better systems, including the use of information technology, avoidance of similar sounding drugs and standardization of evidence-based protocols. Though the technology and systems critical to patient safety are available, medical errors continue in many health systems and limited progress has been made toward patient safety objectives. Resistance often blocks the implementation of needed changes. Open communication among people with different perspectives is a key requirement for minimizing this human barrier to improved patient safety outcomes.
O’Connor, Edward J. and Fiol, C. Marlena Physician Executive Vol. 31 Issue 5, pp. 64-65
Describes how to move into and through transitions between two buildings in case of emergency like fire. Discussion on the three things get people to move into and through transitions; Pain or anticipated pain in the present that demands doing something different; Reduction of the perceived risk during the transition; Object to move forward; Factors that tend to encourage people to move into and through transitions; Rewards for success; Minimization the perceived risk of trying to change through training.
O’Connor, Edward J. and Fiol, C. Marlena Physician Executive Vol. 31, Issue 3, p. 77–78
This article highlights methods to tackle changes encountered by people in their life. While there is no single right approach to tackling change, following a systematic, sequential process developed by others who have effectively traveled through similar territory increases one’s likelihood of success. People develop a sense of increased urgency, a change team starts to effectively work together, a vision is clarified and communicated and people begin to demonstrate behaviors that show buy-in. Under pressure for rapid results, however, leaders often focus on barriers and action steps before energizers are effectively addressed, leading to little progress, many meetings and fruitless, repetitive discussions of the same topics.
Fiol, C. Marlena and O’Connor, Edward J. Organization Science Vol. 16, Issue 1, p. 19-32
Identification is a person’s sense of belonging with a social category. Identification in virtual organizational teams is thought to be especially desirable because it provides the glue that can promote group cohesion despite the relative lack of face-to-face interaction. Though research on virtual teams is exploding, it has not systematically identified the antecedents or moderators of the process by which identification develops, leaving a number of gaps and apparent contradictions. The purpose of this paper is to begin to untangle the contradictions and address some of the gaps by tracing the mechanisms and moderating processes through which identification develops in hybrid and pure virtual settings, and the ways that these processes differ from face-to-face settings.
Fiol, C. Marlene and O’connor, Edward J. Journal of Management Inquiry Vol. 13 Issue 4, p. 342-352.
This essay invites you to entertain the possibility that our current ideas about the human mind and its supposed limitations may themselves be limited. What if organizational realities were more malleable than we believe? What if organizational members could alter their physical surroundings even just occasionally through focused mental attention? We review evidence from numerous fields suggesting that the human mind may be capable of affecting physical reality from a distance and into the past and the future. Although not all studies have provided universal support, the evidence for the impact of focused mental attention is sufficiently compelling and the potential implications sufficiently important that we believe it is time to explicitly examine the organizational implications of the power of the human mind.
Edward J. O’Connor, and C. Marlena Fiol Physician Executive Vol. 30, Issue 5, p. 40-42
There are steps you can take right now to improve your organization’s working environment and help attract top-drawer candidates who may be less likely to exhibit behavior problems.
Edward J. O’Connor, and C. Marlene Fiol American College of Physician Executives
This is a book about entrepreneurial thinking and its application to health care settings. It is a book about building an enduring success. It is about entrepreneurial leadership, ways of thinking and approaches used to produce success by entrepreneurs, and application of these ideas to the world of health care, which is desperately in need of new answers to ever-increasing challenges. The purpose of this book is to view health care challenges through the lens of entrepreneurial solutions so that current challenges and opportunities open the door to an ever-stronger and more effective health care delivery system.