The impact of individual and team professional capital on physicians’ performance in online health-care communities: a cross-level investigation
ISSN: 1066-2243
Article publication date: 15 March 2022
Issue publication date: 28 March 2023
Abstract
Purpose
Online medical teams (OMTs) are gaining popularity as a new form of online health service to provide patients with prompt and guaranteed treatment. While the effective development of an OMT depends on physicians’ active participation, there is insufficient research on how a doctor gains from the OMT, especially from the multilevel and cross-level perspectives. In attempting to narrow this knowledge gap, the authors hypothesize multilevel and cross-level professional capital determinants of physicians’ performance in online health-care communities (OHCs) through the lens of social exchange theory.
Design/methodology/approach
This study develops a cross-level model to explain the effects of individual and team professional capital on physicians’ performance. To test the research model and hypotheses, the authors leverage data of 10,398 physicians engaged in 2,611 popular OMTs in China in conjunction with the hierarchical linear model approach.
Findings
The results indicated that physicians’ status capital (SC) and decisional capital (DC) are positively related to their performance. The SC and DC of an OMT not only increase physicians’ performance but also indirectly strengthen the positive effect of physicians’ SC on their performance. In contrast, OMTs’ SC and DC lessen the importance of physicians’ DC in promoting their performance.
Originality/value
By studying the mechanism between professional capital and physicians’ performance, this study provides several contributions to theory and practice. Specifically, this study contributes to the extant professional capital research by uncovering the influencing pathways of professional capital on physicians’ performance from a cross-level perspective. These findings suggest physicians pay close attention to the strength and mechanism of OMTs’ professional capital in improving their online performance.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Editor, Professor Christy Cheung, for her precious time, the Senior Editor, Associate Editor and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.
Declarations of interest: None.
Funding: The study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71903020]; Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation [19YJC790174] and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [DUT19RW212].
Citation
Wang, J.-J., Liu, H. and Ye, J. (2023), "The impact of individual and team professional capital on physicians’ performance in online health-care communities: a cross-level investigation", Internet Research, Vol. 33 No. 1, pp. 152-177. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-08-2021-0544
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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