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The purpose of this paper is to build a new model of organisational change in Chinese hospitals drawing in all the key factors which explain the change process. At a time of significant change in Chinese hospitals, understanding change recipients’ responses is critical. For this study, a model of their responses to change has been constructed from previous models and compared with a case study of dramatic change in a Chinese hospital. A new model has been produced which may be generalizable to other Chinese hospitals.

Two existing models of organizational change were merged, and the new model was tested using data collected from a research site at a single Chinese hospital where the change program included the balanced scorecard performance management system, a new pay-related performance system and significant strategic change.

A final revised model was created which built in the external context, including the professional culture and national culture which have complex impacts on individuals during a change process, in both beneficial and harmful ways.

Multi-informants for data collection and longitudinal design in future research would be required for the further understanding of the relationships between the variables of this study. A single case study is not sufficient; broader testing is required.

The factors that impact on the individuals during change should be understood better by Chinese hospital managers.

This is a new model which adds to the existing literature. Although it is built primarily around hospitals, it may have relevance to other contexts in China.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of lean leadership in an implementation in a Chinese hospital, considering a particular focus on the attitudes of nursing professionals while identifying specific cultural or institutional factors in China that might affect the implementation.

The authors use Harrison et al.’s (2016) framework to explore the outcomes of a nine-month action research project whereby the authors observed the process and outcomes of implementing lean in a pharmacy intravenous admixture service of a Chinese hospital.

The implementation of lean had positive results, which improved the efficiency of the operation, reduced the work start time and the amount of staff, and improved clinical satisfaction. In the process of implementation, nursing professionals showed a positive attitude toward the implementation and showed no obvious resistance under the positive influence of the head nurse. The combination of Chinese cultural characteristics, nursing culture and strong leadership enabled lean success.

The unit moved from self-management to a systemized process of using lean concepts and methods, it is an important change for hospital managers.

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the process of doing qualitative inductive research in China, drawing its conclusions from a grounded theory study. To be more specific, this paper reflects on the process of approaching interviewees, guaranteeing their participation, conducting the interviews and encouraging responses in the context of Chinese culture.

The discussion in the paper uses Hofstede's cultural dimensions as a tool in the interpretation and understanding of both the behaviour and the preconceptions of the interview participants involved in a research project focused on exploring and explaining barriers and enablers to knowledge sharing between traditional and Western healthcare professionals in China. The context for the study was a public hospital in the province of Hubei in Central China. A total of 49 semi-structured interviews were carried out and analysed.

Despite the grounded theory methodology being applicable in different cultural contexts, the culture itself may present challenges and barriers at both the data collection and analysis stages. These cultural problems may hinder interaction with informants, misunderstanding of responses and behaviours, and thus significantly impair the research validity and reliability.

The paper provides advice and recommendations to researchers aiming at doing this type of study in China.

The paper is of interest to inductive researchers, in particular those using grounded theory, as it describes and discusses the actual application of the methodology in a non-Western context. The paper is also of interest to any researchers intending to undertake participative research in China.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the strategy of market orientation and organizational innovation.

This research adopted a cross‐sectional study using questionnaires to gather research data. Research subjects were presidents and high‐level managers at 491 hospitals, at the level of district hospital or above, in Taiwan. Questionnaires were distributed and 104 valid questionnaires were retrieved, resulting in a response rate of 21.18 per cent.

The results demonstrated that the strategy of market orientation is positively correlated with organizational innovation; the strategies of customer orientation, competitor orientation, and inter‐functional coordination have a positive correlation with technical innovation.

The results of this study provide hospital administrators with a practical method for developing a useful management strategy in order to improve service quality for customers.

The majority of studies on market orientation and innovation have focused primarily on business organizations, particularly western businesses, and not on non‐profit organizations and Chinese businesses. However, the goal of non‐profit organizations when restructuring or improving their management processes is not the pursuit of profit; rather, they engage in these innovative activities in order to boost organizational performance. This study selected Taiwanese hospitals as the research target for the study of non‐profit organizations, and offers an in‐depth discussion.

The purpose of this study is to identify and explain the role of individuals’ awareness and motivation in facilitating knowledge sharing (KS) in the real world of practice, as well as to establish areas of convergence between theory and practice that can be of use to both academics and practitioners involved in knowledge intensive organisations.

This study used Grounded Theory (GT) as an inductive methodology to collect, analyse and interpret data from multiple case-studies. 44 participants from Chinese software organisations were selected on the basis of their role in SW design and development and were interviewed using a semi-structured interview script. The data analysis followed a Straussian approach to coding, which consists of open coding, axial coding and selective coding. The analysis focused on the impact of individuals’ awareness and motivation to share knowledge.

The findings of this research show that the motivation for KS – a time consuming and demanding activity – is indeed related to awareness by managers and developers of the benefits of KS in their professional practice. Practitioners shared their experiences and tacit knowledge with others, partly because it was required by their companies, but also because they have a sound awareness of the need to share knowledge both inside and outside their organisations.

As a typical social science inductive study, this research is bounded by the context in which the theory proposed emerged from. Further research should be conducted into a richer variety of organisational and national contexts, as suggested by good theoretical sampling practice, which could provide further insights or contrasts.

Despite a number of theoretical propositions found in the literature, there is a clear lack of implementation strategies and models that explain the role of awareness and motivation in facilitating KS in the world of practice. This issue of applicability of theoretical propositions is now recognised as one of the fundamental key issues in KS. This study provides new and practice grounded insights in this area and is of interest to both practitioners and theoreticians as it explains and bridges the individuals’ awareness and motivation for tacit KS.

Effective knowledge management (KM) enables the health care organisations to reach their goals. In modern health care the empowered patients are active partners, whose preferences, needs and values should be taken into account. Shared decision making (SDM) aims at involving the patient and the health professionals as equal partners in care. The purpose of this paper is to present a new model of health care information and knowledge processes (IKPs) as a KM framework. The aim is to scrutinise what types of knowing can be identified the IKPs and how do the knowledge processes support SDM. The role of patients in the IKPs is discussed.

The qualitative case study was conducted in two Finnish university hospital districts in integrated care pathways of childhood obesity. In total, 30 professionals and three mothers and children were interviewed 2009-2011 and the findings were supported with a survey (n=13) and document material.

The findings indicate that the patients and families involvement in the IKPs is modest. This implies that SDM is not completely fulfilled which may affect the families commitment to positive lifestyle changes.

The data of the patients and families were limited due to the challenges with recruitment.

The detailed IKP model enables the health organisations to scrutinise their own IKPs and to identify the shortages in order to change practices.

This paper presents a new model of health care KM which recognises the patients as active partners.

This study aims to minimize the research gap by finding out what are the current state of knowledge management (KM) in the Chinese private science and technology organizations, the essential factors for promoting KM behaviors and the role of knowledge-oriented leadership in determining employees’ KM behaviors. Specifically, this research attempts to create a theoretical framework, which can be used to facilitate KM implementation in general, in the Chinese context in particular.

Semi-structured interviews with executives, senior managers and specialists were used to capture interviewees’ responses to the research question. The responses were analyzed with Nvivo to detect the obstacles of KM behaviors within Chinese private science and technology organizations.

This study highlights that poor KM behaviors are caused by knowledge-oriented leaders’ weak awareness of the KM values, and also these leaders are not equipped with the necessary knowledge-oriented leadership skills. As a result, there is a lack of knowledge sharing and knowledge inheritance. To respond to the identified KM related issues, while maximizing the KM values, some effective countermeasures focusing on the strategic, managerial as well as operational levels are proposed.

There is a need for knowledge-oriented leaders to recognize the growing significance of KM practices, and to increase the level of awareness of KM values. To achieve such ambition, they need to build a corporate knowledge culture, which promotes knowledge development, application, preservation, sharing and inheritance.

This study contributes to deepening the understandings of the linkage between knowledge-oriented leadership and KM behaviors, which is of great significance to promote the soft power of KM on employees’ attitudes and behaviors.

Self-service libraries (SSLs) have been regarded as an effective approach to provide convenient book services to the enormously large populations of China’s cities. These SSLs are in fact automatic book service machines, which provide a combination of services, including reading card issuing, book lending and returning, and book reservations and collection. However, despite acclaimed success, SSL services are not well received by patrons and are underutilised. The purpose of this paper is to identify and understand the causes of the underutilisation of SSL services in Chinese cities.

This study adopted an inductive approach and a case study research design. The SSL services in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei Province, were adopted as the case study, in which 20 public librarians, SSL workers and managers, and library patrons were approached and interviewed using semi-structured question scripts. The interview data were analysed using a thematic analysis approach.

The analysis pointed to 13 causes in three main themes: management problems, service limitations, and the implicit role of government. Further conceptualisation of the findings revealed that the underutilisation of SSL services has resulted from the absence of a patron-centric perspective and the negligence of patrons’ needs and requirements. Therefore, to increase the popularity and usage of SSLs, it is necessary to develop patron-centric management mechanisms through which patrons’ needs and requirements can be effectively understood and responded to.

This study aims to develop specific suggestions to improve the usage of SSLs. Furthermore, although this study focuses on SSL development in China, this research can provide useful suggestions and implications that can be shared across international borders.

This paper aims to explore what Chinese doctors have learned in authentic medical practice, what they want to learn, and the dynamics behind their professional learning in working contexts.

The paper uses Narrative Inquiry, qualitative data which were collected by open‐ended face‐to‐face interviews and participative observation. Seven doctors from three hospitals in Shandong province were purposefully invited. Each participant was interviewed at least once, and all interview recordings were transcribed into research texts. The author narrated and re‐narrated stories of one chosen participant named Li Hengyang (pseudonym).

The paper finds that Chinese doctors divided their learning into two kinds: “professional” and “non‐professional”. The intrinsic‐motive‐driven learning of medical knowledge and techniques was attributed to “professional” and the extrinsic‐motive‐driven learning of “other things” was treated as “non‐professional”. The resultant force of intrinsic and extrinsic motives caused a performance disorder, a vague sense of professional identity, and involuntary expressive behaviours. The author finally pointed out that Chinese doctors' professional learning in working contexts is, to some extent, identity‐oriented.

Single theoretical perspective constrained the analysis; future research may use different theoretical perspectives besides Goffman's theatrical performance theory.

The paper presents identity‐oriented learning of Chinese doctors and the dynamics behind it, which have practical implications for Chinese doctors, medical professional educators and national medical policy makers.

Although Chinese doctors' training and education have been explored a lot, their professional learning in working contexts was rarely studied before.