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Leadership skills are vital for efficient delivery of health reforms. India, a low- and middle-income country, is transforming its public health care significantly. The health workforce, particularly doctors, however lacks leadership skills. This study aims to highlight the leadership skills gap and raise concerns about how India might achieve its ambitious health reforms in the lack of formal, prospective leadership training for its workforce.

This study conducted nine management development programmes between 2012 and 2020 and collected data from 416 (N = 444, 94% response rate) health-care professionals using a questionnaire. Participants were asked to inform leadership challenges that they perceived critical. A total of 47 unique challenges were identified, which were distributed across five domains of American College of Healthcare Executives Competency Assessment Tool (2020). Relevant information was also obtained from review of secondary sources including journal articles from scientific and grey literature and government websites.

Majority of participants (85.36%) had never attended any management training and were from public sector (56.1%). Mean total experience was 18 years. Top 5 challenges were lack of motivation (54.26%), communication (52.38%), contracts management (48.31%), leadership skills (47.26%) and retention of workforce (45.56%). Maximum challenges (29) were in domain of business skills and knowledge, followed by knowledge of health-care environment (9), leadership, professionalism, and communication and relationship management (3 each).

In absence of the leadership training, senior health professionals particularly doctors in India, suffer leadership challenges. Efforts should be made to strengthen leadership capacity in Indian health-care system to advance the country’s ongoing national health reforms.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the primary executive leadership skills required to promote the effectiveness of Medicare Shared Savings Program Accountable Care Organizations (MSSP ACOs) and to create a new substantive theory describing these skills. The author identifies that MSSP ACO is a relatively new value-based care delivery (VBCD) structure in the USA that links clinicians’ compensation to their clinical outcomes. The research question concerns what primary executive leadership skills are essential in the VBCD era.

This single, embedded, exploratory case study is based on interviews, a focus group discussion and archival record data of MSSP ACO executives in the Northeast, Midwest, South and West of the USA.

The findings represented seven major categories or the primary executive leadership skills required to succeed in the VBCD environment. Each category or skill included five subcategories or concepts supporting the leadership skills essential for reaching VBCD goals. The categories and subcategories gave rise to a new substantive theory – the Accountable Healthcare Leadership Theory of Five Ps: promoting partnership between providers, patients and payers.

The empirical generalizability of the results was limited by its essence as a single, embedded, exploratory case study of 18 MSSP ACO executives in 4 regions of the USA. The strength of this study, however, lies in its potential for making analytic generalizations for identifying theoretically meaningful leadership skills essential for success in the VBCD era.

The author has developed and validated a new theory describing the primary executive leadership skills required to succeed in the VBCD environment.

Health care organizations are increasingly demanded to balance the institutional logic of “medical professionalism” and “business-like health care,” that is, to both recognize physicians’ professional expertise while locating it in a wider social, economic, and political organizational setting. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications from this shift in terms of leadership work in health care organizations.

Case study methodology including interviews with 15 residents in Swedish health care organizations.

A study of the willingness of residents to take on leadership positions show that leadership roles are treated as what is potentially hindering the acquisition of the know-how, skills, and expertise demanded to excel in the clinical work. Consequently, taking on leadership positions in the future was relatively unattractive for the residents. In order to overcome such perceived conflict between professional skill development and leadership roles, top management of health care organizations must help residents overcome such beliefs, or other professional groups may increasingly populate leadership positions, a scenario not fully endorsed by the community of physicians.

The paper demonstrates how complementary or completing institutional logics are influencing debates and identities on the “shop floors” of organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to stimulate thinking about the relative importance of leaders and leadership or teamworking and teamsmanship in promoting progressive improvements in health care provision. The author argues that much more emphasis should be placed on the purpose and functioning of health care teams than on developing traditional heroic leaders. The attributes that the author has come to see as important in leaders within healthcare teams have been described. Some of these are far from glamorous and include good organisation, hard work and self-discipline.

Over the past five years, the author has read widely on leadership, as well as on “lean” philosophies of working. During that time the author has tried to introduce changes to improve the working practices of their inpatient care team. The essay was written on the basis of reflection and discussion. This is a free-form article, in the old style of essay writing. This format is ideal for stimulating high-level thinking in readers’ minds.

There should be far more emphasis on training in and development of teams, team-working and teamsmanship than on individual leaders and leadership skills in health care.

The author hopes this essay is original, stimulating thinking, expressed in a readable format, and that it will prove valuable to those responsible for making improvements in health care provision at both the macro-and microlevels.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a new public health leadership graduate program, and the incorporation of a practical global perspective to health leadership education using contemporary organization development inquiry methods to develop a case‐based learning strategy using graduate student‐authored cases.

Case‐based curricula have been designed for the leadership and organizational change courses in the Public Health Leadership MPH Program that promote a global orientation and relevancy by having graduate students individually develop cases based on their experiences and observations in their own health care and social systems. They develop these cases using an extensive series of Appreciative Inquiry questions that focus on successful leadership practices, and the key stages involved in leading successful sustainable change. This method gives the students a framework to analyze leadership and leading change cases from the perspective of what the leaders they have observed did well and what they could have changed to have been more effective.

The student‐authored leadership and leading change case‐studies, based on an Appreciative Inquiry question strategy, indicate that this approach is indeed helpful in meeting the adopted mandate of making the leadership training curriculum relevant not only to Canadians, but also to those international graduate students who come from widely differing health and social systems.

The design of this leadership program appears to have real potential in facilitating graduate students to understand how leadership practices and leading change processes are applicable both within the context of their own health care and social systems, and through encouraging a class‐wide global perspective by learning from each other's unique case studies.

This paper illustrates how principles from organization development inquiry methods can be used to customize case‐study learning to bring global perspective to health leadership education.

To effectively develop leaders, human resources and career development professionals need an effective method of determining leadership skill levels. For example, sending a novice leader to training meant for experts would likely be ineffective and frustrating for both the instructor and individual. Promoting a novice leader to a position requiring expert leadership skills could be disastrous. The purpose of this study was to determine if the Dreyfus (2004) model of skills acquisition could be applied to general leadership.

A total of 124 surveys were collected from five employers. Participants self-assessed their leadership skill level from novice to expert using Dreyfus level descriptions in 18 leadership self-efficacy dimensions identified by Anderson, Krajewski, Goffin and Jackson (2008). For comparison, leadership self-efficacy (LSE) was also measured with a self-assessment of proficiency in 88 specific leadership and management behaviors also identified in the Anderson et al. (2008) study.

Pearson correlation coefficient computations between total LSE and average Dreyfus level dimensions reported a strong positive correlation [r (124) = 0.644, p < 0.001] between total leadership self-efficacy and the average participant Dreyfus level self-assessments in each of the 18 leadership self-efficacy dimensions. Of the 18 LSE dimensions participants assessed their skill levels, 4 were found to be significant predictors of LSE [F (4,119) = 67.6887, p < 0.001] with an R² = 0.482. Predicted leadership self-efficacy is equal to 187.14 + 16.327 (Project Credibility) + 8.046 (Mentor) + 6.971 (Build) + 9.342 (Solve).

The majority of the individuals in the sample in this research study were from one employer, a local college (n = 88). The entire sample was from one small, somewhat isolated community. The majority of this sample was female (n = 81, 65 per cent) and white (n = 118, 95.2 per cent). A larger and more diverse sample may provide differing results. It also possible that other factors affected overall LSE, but using that score as a comparison, a clear correlation was shown between LSE and Dreyfus levels.

Based on the results of this study an individual who self-categorizes his or her leadership skill as novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient or expert is likely correct. Should the findings of this study prove generalizable, an individual’s perceived leadership skill level could be closely approximated with a simple, four-item instrument.

The concept of leadership levels has appeared in many studies and popular press publications. However, quantifying leadership skill levels or determining an individual’s leadership level has not been often addressed. This study attempts to apply a skills acquisition model and apply it to general leadership. The results appear to show that leadership levels can be quantified and accurately self-determined. This study also attempted to validate a leadership self-efficacy model.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the interactions among different readiness factors for implementing agility in healthcare organization. Total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) based readiness framework for agility has been developed to understand the mutual interactions among the factors and to identify the driving and dependence power of these factors.

The identification of factors is done by TISM approach used for analyzing the mutual interactions between factors. Cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification analysis is utilized to find the driving and dependent factors of agile readiness in healthcare.

This paper identifies 12 factors of readiness for change in literature review, which is followed by an expert interview to understand the interconnection of factors and to study interrelationships of factors. The study suggests that factors like environmental scanning, resource availability, innovativeness, cost effectiveness, organizational leadership, training and development are important for implementing/improving the readiness of agility in healthcare organizations.

This research focuses mainly on readiness factors for agility in healthcare sector.

Top management must stress on readiness factors that have a strong driving power for efficient implementation of agility in healthcare. This study helps the managers to take quick decisions, and continuous monitoring of readiness factors would be more beneficial to improve the quality of service, which makes the organization more agile.

In this research, TISM-based readiness for agile framework structural model has been proposed for healthcare organizations, which is a new effort for implementation of agility in healthcare.

The purpose of this study is to describe the characteristics of management and leadership competence of health-care leaders and managers, especially in the hospital environment. Health-care leaders and managers in this study were both nursing and physician managers. Competence was assessed by evaluating the knowledge, skills, attitudes and abilities that enable management and leadership tasks.

A systematic literature review was performed to find articles that identify and describe the characteristics of management and leadership competence. Searches of electronic databases were conducted using set criteria for article selection. Altogether, 13 papers underwent an inductive content analysis.

The characteristics of management and leadership competence were categorized into the following groups: health-care-context-related, operational and general.

One limitation of the study is that only 13 articles were found in the literature regarding the characteristics of management and leadership competence. However, the search terms were relevant, and the search process was endorsed by an information specialist. The study findings imply the need to shift away from the individual approach to leadership and management competence. Management and leadership need to be assessed more frequently from a holistic perspective, and not merely on the basis of position in the organizational hierarchy or of profession in health care.

The authors’ evaluation of the characteristics of management and leadership competence without a concentrated profession-based approach is original.