O’Connor, Edward J. and Fiol, C. Marlena
Physician Executive Vol. 33 Issue 1, p. 68-70

What steps can you take as a leader to involve your people in getting these important pieces in place? Do you have to do all this yourself, or are there leadership strategies that will encourage your people to step forward and willingly carry this burden with you?

O’Connor, Edward J. and Fiol, C. Marlena
Physician Executive Vol. 32 Issue 6, p. 78-80

The article presents the authors’ views on handling individual emotional reactions to change. Individual emotional reactions to change go through several phases including naive confidence, denial, depression and informed hopefulness. It is important to understand and manage the transitions of people through these phases. After diagnosing a particular phase of emotional transition, specific actions can be taken toward the next phase of emotional transition.

O’Connor, Edward J. and Fiol, C. Marlena
Physician Executive Vol. 32 Issue 6, p. 46-50

The article discusses various issues related to physician morale. According to a survey, physicians have tried to regain their autonomy in several ways. Physician attitudes and behaviors affect the cost, and quality of health services in many ways. Several clinical quality improvement initiatives launched by accreditation bodies, and government agencies are designed to address the identified quality problem.

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.

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.

O’Connor, Edward J. and Fiol, C. Marlena
Physician Executive Vol. 31, Issue 2, p. 56-58

Focuses on the management of change in health care industry in the U.S. Reactions to change; Failure rates for change initiatives.

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.