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Informal payments (IPs) for healthcare are a serious obstacle to equitable access and universal health coverage in developing countries. Policy makers need to know more about the hidden nature of informal patient payments (IPPs) before any policy adoption and implementation. The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the main factors affecting IPPs.

This systematic review was conducted in 2018 using the standard guideline of PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses. All English original articles on the determinants of IPPs published in the scientific journals, whose full text was available through Scopus, PubMed and Web of Science databases, which were given consideration for review.

The results showed that IPPs were greatly dependent on the characteristics of healthcare consumers, providers, healthcare system and services. Among healthcare consumers’ characteristics affecting IPPs, the income, age, education, gender, employment and health status were more cited factors, respectively. Among healthcare providers’ characteristics affecting IPPs, the providers’ experience, reputation, and salary satisfaction were better known, respectively. Among healthcare services features, the hospitalization, service specialty and the level of treatment urgency were more noted, respectively.

Policy making against IPs in the health sector requires precise attention to all components of healthcare market, including healthcare consumers, providers, healthcare system and services characteristics.

This chapter proposes a global agenda to eliminate racism in nursing by targeting reform at nursing education administration internationally. First, the history of racism in nursing is reviewed, along with two models – the diversity model and the cultural competence model – that were applied unsuccessfully to counteract racism in nursing. Second, a description of how racism is entrenched in nursing leadership globally is presented. Third, the recalcitrant structures that serve to maintain institutionalized racism (IR) in the international nursing education system are carefully examined. Specifically, the components and constructs involved in IR in nursing education are delineated, and the way in which these negatively impact both ethnic minority (EM) students and faculty are explained. Based on this, a global agenda to eliminate racism in nursing education internationally is proposed. Eliminating racism in higher education in nursing is a mandatory social responsibility if global healthcare is ever to be equitable. Five actionable recommendations are made to eliminate racism in higher education are summarized as follows: (1) components of nursing programs which are designed to eliminate racism in nursing education should be governed at the country level, (2) to design and implement a system of surveillance of the global nursing community to enable standardized measurement to ensure nursing education programs in all countries are meeting anti-racism benchmark targets, (3) nursing education programs should be established worldwide to provide individual pipeline and mentorship programs to ensure the career success of EM nursing students and faculty, (4) nursing education programs should be conducted to reduce barriers to EM participation in these individual support programs, and (5) nursing education programs are required to teach their nursing faculty skills in developing anti-racist curricula that seeks to eliminate implicit bias.

The aim of this paper is to analyse how technological innovations in performance measurement systems make it possible to overcome some of the challenges that public healthcare organizations face where management and control are concerned. The changes that could be applied to the performance measurement system of healthcare organisations were analysed together with an evaluation of the responses developed in order to achieve these changes.

The paper contains an in-depth case-study of a public university hospital which utilises an innovative information system.

The case-study highlights how technological innovations in performance measurement systems impact the management and monitoring information system in a public university hospital, through the implementation of a multidimensional management dashboard.

The limitation of this paper is that only one case-study is analysed, albeit in depth, while it would be interesting to consider more public university hospitals.

The paper highlights the fundamental role of middle management in change processes in the healthcare sector.

The case-study highlights how critical the active involvement of middle management is in performance measurement and management, and how this is achieved thanks to the adoption of a simple, clear method which ensures comprehensible communication of the objectives, as well as the measurement of performance by means of radar plots.

The Stanford School of Organizational Sociology has influenced the development and direction of healthcare organizations as a field of research in several very significant ways. This chapter will provide a focused review of the major paradigms to develop from work at Stanford from 1970 to 2000, much of which involved the study of processes and structures within and surrounding healthcare organizations during this period. As a subarea of organizational theory and health services research, healthcare organizations embrace both theory-based research and applied research, and they borrow concepts, theories, and methods from medical sociology, organizational theory, healthcare administration and management, and (to a more limited extent) health economics and decision theory. The bulk of this chapter will focus on four major themes or paradigms from research on healthcare organizations that grew from work by faculty and students within the Stanford School of Organizational Sociology: Health Care Outcomes, Internal Organizational Dynamics, Organizations and Their Environments, and Organizational Systems of Care and Populations of Care Providers. Following our examination of these four paradigms, we will consider their implications for current and future debates in health services research and healthcare policy.

The purpose of this paper is to study critical practices when adopting improvement knowledge as a management innovation in a professional organization.

This paper is based on an action research approach, in which practitioners and researchers are seen as a part of a participative community generating actionable knowledge. Research involved gathering data over a five-year period through more than 250 interviews and 25 focus groups.

This paper identifies five critical practices for adopting a management innovation in a professional context: first, focussing on labeling and theorizing to create an organization’s own vocabulary; second, focussing on the role of internal change agents; third, allowing for an evolutionary adoption process; fourth, building new professional competence through the change agents; and fifth, adopting a research-driven approach to the adoption of a management innovation.

For healthcare practitioners, this paper points to practices to consider when adopting improvement knowledge – for example, identifying the patient as the guiding principle and encouraging involvement and local change initiatives. For practitioners in other professionally driven organizations, this paper identifies critical practices for adopting a management innovation – for example, focussing on theorizing and labeling in order to create an organization’s own vocabulary related to the professional context.

On a generic level, this paper contributes to the understanding of critical aspects when adopting management innovations in a professional organization. In a healthcare context, this paper points to the value of improvement knowledge for improving quality of care. Improvement knowledge is relatively new in healthcare, and this study provides an example of a hospital in which this management innovation helped transform the organization.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how healthcare professionals understand a new organisational brand and examine the ideas discussed in relation to it within healthcare organisations.

The research is based on a discursive approach that facilitates understanding how the informants perceived a new organisation brand and how that might shape their activities in the enterprise.

The study identified four distinct interpretative repertoires: the organisational brand as an economic solution, the magic wand, the factory and a servant to the customer. The new brand was understood in terms of economic and business-like functions marked by external branding and its signs (logos, etc.). The brand is not communicated to patients or colleagues and the factory metaphor is applied to work practices. Hence, several potential dilemmas arise concerning the brand promise, customer expectations, economic and efficiency gains and the professional values of employees.

Adoption of private-sector practices in semi-public or public-sector organisations is common. This study focuses on how private-sector ideas diffuse into the organisations and how they are translated within them.

The authors suggest a stronger emphasis on internal branding as a reconciliation to enhance legitimacy, high-quality customer service and staff wellbeing.

Theoretically, the unique contribution of the study is drawing upon healthcare branding, dilemma theory and discursive institutionalism in its interpretation. Consequently, it demonstrates how ideas about the brand and public healthcare are translated and communicated in the examined discourses and how those ideas reconstruct understanding and change behaviour within the organisations.

Maternal mortality is an acute problem for many countries around the world, particularly those at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP). Most remote locations in these underdeveloped nations, for instance, in Africa, have to cope with the problem of interrupted electricity supply making healthcare practitioners often experience a helpless compulsion to compromise in providing quality medical attention, especially during childbirth. Along with many public, private and nongovernment initiatives, WE CARE Solar (hereafter WCS) – a social innovation venture comes with an idea of developing portable solar suitcases to respond to this intransigent problem.

This paper introduces a social enterprise that established its operation in Africa and so far has served in more than 30 similarly impoverished economies. Data was collected, analyzed using documentary research method. The authors have also collected and correlated the statements from the founder of WCS to complement the authors’ findings. With this paper, the authors intend to establish the type of innovation tools that are needed to provide value with a social innovation initiative in the health sector in the least developed country perspective. To facilitate better social outcomes and to ensure greater good, innovation requires to be accompanied by stakeholders’ involvement.

The findings indicate that WE CARE Solar has a positive social contribution toward ensuring safe motherhood and childbirth in underdeveloped countries by providing access to reliable solar power sources. The six-step social innovation process can be adopted by other social ventures to propose innovative solutions to social needs. Analyzing WCS's service delivery from the perspective of the 4As framework and value co-creation model, it is suggested that sustainable social change can be established with value co-creation through community engagement with multiple stakeholders.

This research was solely focused on one organization alone. Future research could look into the model to ascertain its acceptability in similar social innovation in healthcare initiatives.

This paper attempts to address a gap in social innovation in healthcare and its adaptability using the 4As framework with the value co-creation model. The authors propose this model from the data accumulated throughout the research, which could also serve to assist organizations looking for scalable and sustainable change.

Application of operations management in healthcare is particularly promising to improve the overall organisational performance, although the Italian system is behind in introducing related techniques and methods. One of the recent experiments in healthcare is the implementation of “Lean Thinking”. The purpose of this paper is to investigate which exogenous forces are driving knowledge transfer on Lean, both in the private and public healthcare sectors.

Informed by institutional sociology (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Powell and DiMaggio, 1991), the paper builds on the case study methodology (Yin, 2013) to elucidate the environmental pressures that are encouraging the adoption of Lean thinking by Italian hospitals and Local Health Authorities.

The study highlights the economic, coercive, mimetic and normative pressures that are triggering the adoption of Lean thinking in the Italian National Health System (INHS). At the same time, the authors reveal the pivotal importance and innovative roles played by diverse prominent key-actors in the different organisations investigated.

Considering that little is known to date regarding which exogenous forces are driving the transfer of knowledge on Lean, especially in the public healthcare sector, the paper allows scholars to focus on patterns of isomorphic change and will facilitate managers and policy makers to understand exogenous factors stimulating the transfer of Lean thinking and the subsequent innovation within health organisations and systems.

Healthcare professionals are key in healthcare organisations but are subject to long working hours and may have to make complex life-and-death decisions. As frontline agents dealing with human lives, giving them a voice is paramount. This study explores the impact of employee voice (assessed based on employee perceptions on how much they are consulted and how much influence they have on task-related decisions) on health professionals' work engagement and burnout when mediated by relational outcomes (perceived organisational support, workplace trust, workplace recognition and meaningful work).

A sample of 3,266 health professionals retrieved from the European Working Condition Survey was used. The quantitative analysis was performed using the partial least square structural equation modelling and multiple regression analyses.

The results indicate that employee voice has a direct positive impact on work engagement, but employee voice's direct effects on burnout still need to be confirmed. Relational outcomes are found to mediate the relationship between employee voice and burnout (decreasing it) and between employee voice and work engagement (increasing it).

Practices of employee voice in the workplace are fundamental to promoting health professionals' well-being. Trust, recognition, support and the feeling of doing meaningful work increase the influence of employee voice, especially in reducing the levels of burnout.

This is the first study that assesses, at a European level, the importance that ‘giving health professionals a voice' has on crucial employee outcomes: work engagement, burnout and relational outcomes.