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Workload is a critical concept in the evaluation of performance and quality in healthcare systems, but its definition relies on the perspective (e.g. individual clinician-level vs unit-level workload) and type of available metrics (e.g. objective vs subjective measures). The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of objective measures of workload associated with direct care delivery in tertiary healthcare settings, with a focus on measures that can be obtained from electronic records to inform operationalization of workload measurement.

Relevant papers published between January 2008 and July 2018 were identified through a search in Pubmed and Compendex databases using the Sample, Phenomenon of Interest, Design, Evaluation, Research Type framework. Identified measures were classified into four levels of workload: task, patient, clinician and unit.

Of 30 papers reviewed, 9 used task-level metrics, 14 used patient-level metrics, 7 used clinician-level metrics and 20 used unit-level metrics. Key objective measures of workload include: patient turnover (n=9), volume of patients (n=6), acuity (n=6), nurse-to-patient ratios (n=5) and direct care time (n=5). Several methods for operationalization of these metrics into measurement tools were identified.

This review highlights the key objective workload measures available in electronic records that can be utilized to develop an operational approach for quantifying workload. Insights gained from this review can inform the design of processes to track workload and mitigate the effects of increased workload on patient outcomes and clinician performance.

Executives are challenged every day to make important decisions that affect the performance of their business enterprises and, as a result, the success of their own careers. Based on that scenario, one cannot expect that only the rational approach works like a panacea for all managerial problems. This paper aims to propose that the best solution tends to embrace a complementary or integrated decision‐making approach.

The paper seeks to demonstrate that the convergence between rational and non‐rational decision‐making processes can be optimized by integrating several religious tenets.

The paper finds strong evidence that a religion‐based framework might enrich the sensitive topic of decision‐making processes in organizations.

Overall, the paper strives to show that intuition and prayer are two faces of the same coin, and argues that both forms of decision processes (e.g. rational and non‐rational analysis) might coexist perfectly in an integrative frame.

The article proposes prayer as a transcendent coping mechanism whereby executives might refine their intuition flux. As a result, it depicts a conceptual framework encapsulating all those constructs.

The purpose of this paper is to expand the knowledge about the value of intuition for organizational innovativeness and organizational factors inhibiting intuitive decision making.

The study develops and tests a theoretical model that relates intuitive and deliberate decision-making styles to organizational innovativeness, and the application of either decision-making style to organizational size and decision maker's power position in an organization. Based on a survey conducted in 2011, data from 281 organizations was analyzed applying linear regression analysis.

Intuitive and deliberate processing both relate positively to organizational innovativeness. Organizational size relates negatively to the application of an intuitive decision-making style, while power position relates positively to the application of an intuitive decision-making style.

The findings suggest that intuitive decision making is valuable for organizational innovativeness. Still, its application is suppressed if decision makers are in lower power positions or part of larger organizations.

High demands on managers’ and entrepreneurs’ information processing capabilities require them to apply their full range of cognitive capabilities (i.e. deliberative and intuitive processing). Intuitive decision making, however, still seems to be confined to those who have least reason to fear critique from others.

In the closing decades of the twentieth, and at the start of the twenty‐first, centuries, attention has again turned to the critical role of intuition in effective managerial decision making. This paper examines the history of intuition in management thought by tracing its origins to Chester I. Barnard. This paper reveals not only the intellectual roots linking Barnard’s conceptualization of intuition in management thought to, among others, the influential works of the economist and sociologist, Vilfredo Pareto; Lawrence Henderson’s influence on Barnard through Henderson’s leadership and direction of the Harvard Pareto Circle; the works of the early pragmatist John Dewey; Humphrey’s The Nature of Learning; and Koffka’s Principles of Gestalt Psychology. Further, Barnard’s conceptualization of intuition foreshadowed by nearly two decades nearly all of Polanyi’s thinking and elaboration of tacit knowledge. This paper also examines Barnard’s and Simon’s differing views on intuition and provides a brief overview of contemporary research on intuition in managerial decision making.

Posits that every enterprise must institutionalize its workplace learning systems and opportunities in such a way that it radiates what it has already achieved and from this moves on to realize its full potential – in short, the enterprise itself is the key. Examines in successive chapters: the individual manager and questioning insights (Q); the major systems which the enterprise uses to capture and structure its learning; a SWOT analysis of the enterprise′s total learning; action learning, its contribution to the achievement of enterprise growth, and the role of programmed knowledge (P); the Enterprise School of Management (ESM) as a phoenix of enlightenment and effectiveness rising from the ashes of traditional, less effective management training initiatives; and, finally, the practical realization of the action learning dream, as evidenced by emerging examples of successful and profitable implementation worldwide. Concludes with a selection of pertinent abstracts.

The literature indicates the advantages of decisions formulated through intuition, as well as the limitations, such as lack of consistency in similar situations. The principle of consistency (invariance), requiring that two equivalent versions of choice‐problems will produce the same preference, is violated in intuitive judgment. This paper aims to examine the contribution of the simple decision process (SDP) to invariance in intuitive educational decisions. The SDP integrates intuitive and systematic techniques by breaking down a dilemma into simple problems that can be processed intuitively with little or no perturbation by bias.

In total, 40 teachers resolved a complex educational dilemma three times intuitively, with the same data presented in a different order in each iteration. Content analysis revealed inconsistency in the conclusions reached with the three formats. This is explained in the literature by the anchoring effect. Thereafter, the three‐step procedure was repeated, with the participation of 246 teachers using SDP. A statistical analysis showed significant invariance with respect to decisions made during the three trials.

An SDP formulated decision is not affected by the order of data presentation. The principle of invariance, a sine qua non in analyzing rational choices, is maintained

The article sheds light on the potential inherent in integration of intuition and common sense with analytical thought‐patterns in educational decisions and in other fields that involve probabilistic determinations.