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This chapter examines why managed clinical networks are an appropriate approach to sustainable healthcare, and discusses the conditions for the effectiveness of these multi-stakeholder, clinician-led modes of organizing. It describes the development of a national clinical network to achieve system-wide improvement in the provision of publicly funded cardiac surgery services in New Zealand, and the subsequent evolution of a broader network encompassing the whole cardiac care patient pathway.

The case study of the two cardiac clinical networks focuses on the emergence and evolution of the networks over a four-year period from 2009. Data were collected from interviews with key stakeholders of both networks and from internal and published documentary evidence. Analysis of the case study is informed by network theory and prior studies of managed clinical networks.

Progress made towards the achievement of the goals of the initial cardiac surgery network encouraged a broadening of focus to the entire cardiac care pathway and the establishment of the national cardiac network. An important benefit has been the learning and increase in understanding among the different stakeholders involved. Both clinical networks have demonstrated the value of clinician engagement and leadership in improving the delivery of health services, and serve as a best practice model for the development of further clinical networks for health services that require a national population base.

The case study analysis of the two cardiac clinical networks identifies five mutually reinforcing themes that underpin network effectiveness: network structure, management and governance, and internal and external legitimation. These themes encompass a number of factors suggestive of successful managed clinical networks, and offer insights into the use of such networks in organizing for sustainable healthcare.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic meltdown and social unrest severely challenged most countries, their societies, economies, organizations, and individual citizens. Focusing on both more and less successful country-specific initiatives to fight the pandemic and its multitude of related consequences, this chapter explores implications for leadership and effective action at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. As international management scholars and consultants, the authors document actions taken and their wide-ranging consequences in a diverse set of countries, including countries that have been more or less successful in fighting the pandemic, are geographically larger and smaller, are located in each region of the world, are economically advanced and economically developing, and that chose unique strategies versus strategies more similar to those of their neighbors. Cultural influences on leadership, strategy, and outcomes are described for 19 countries. Informed by a cross-cultural lens, the authors explore such urgent questions as: What is most important for leaders, scholars, and organizations to learn from critical, life-threatening, society-encompassing crises and grand challenges? How do leaders build and maintain trust? What types of communication are most effective at various stages of a crisis? How can we accelerate learning processes globally? How does cultural resilience emerge within rapidly changing environments of fear, shifting cultural norms, and profound challenges to core identity and meaning? This chapter invites readers and authors alike to learn from each other and to begin to discover novel and more successful approaches to tackling grand challenges. It is not definitive; we are all still learning.

As the world of healthcare changes rapidly, healthcare leaders and managers must hone their leadership competencies in order to remain effective in their organizations. With changes such as the Affordable Care Act, increasing medical school costs, decreased graduation rates, and increased needs for care, how are current and future healthcare leaders adapting? In light of the large-scale changes in the healthcare field in recent years, the purpose of this study was to investigate which National Center for Healthcare Leadership (NCHL) competencies were referenced by exemplary healthcare leaders as most important for success in today’s changing healthcare environment. Interviews were conducted with 26 mid- and upper-level healthcare leaders identified by the C-level executives in their organizations as exemplary performers. Change leadership, self-development, talent development, and team leadership were the top four NCHL competencies most frequently referenced, with thematic analysis revealing additional underlying themes in the exemplary leaders’ dialogue.

The purpose of this paper is to call for strong medical co-leadership in transforming the Australian health system. The paper discusses how Health LEADS Australia, the Australian health leadership framework, offers an opportunity to engage medical clinicians and doctors in the leadership of health services.

The paper first discusses the nature of medical leadership and its associated challenges. The paper argues that medical leaders have a key role in the design, implementation and evaluation of healthcare reforms, and in translating these reforms for their colleagues. Second, this paper describes the origins and nature of Health LEADS Australia. Third, this paper discusses the importance of the goal of Health LEADS Australia and suggests the evidence-base underpinning the five foci in shaping medical leadership education and professional development. This paper concludes with suggestions on how Health LEADS Australia might be evaluated.

For the well-being of the Australian health system, doctors need to play an important role in the kind of leadership that makes measurable differences in the retention of clinical professions; improves organisational cultures; enhances the engagement of consumers and their careers; is associated with better patient and public health outcomes; effectively addresses health inequalities; balances cost effectiveness with improved quality and safety; and is sustainable.

This is the first article addressing Health LEADS Australia and medical leadership. Australia is actively engaging in a national approach to health leadership. Discussions about the mechanisms and intentions of this are valuable in both national and global health leadership discourses.

The devastating 2014 Ebola outbreak caused human and economic loss, but it also resulted in remarkable improvement in healthcare leadership. The impact is most evident in the affected West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. In this chapter, the Ebola experience is used as a framework to explore the essential elements of healthcare leadership, with particular attention to healthcare crises in under-resourced communities. Overall, healthcare leadership presents unique challenges. In common with leaders of other industries, healthcare leaders must inspire others, create a sense of purpose, make difficult decisions and collaborate with a range of people. But, because their focus is on complex systems that aim to improve people's physical and mental well-being, expectations of healthcare leaders are especially high. Their work can be a matter of life or death. For the leader in an under-resourced area, the challenge and expectations are even higher, particularly in the face of new or emerging health threats. The key to effective healthcare leadership is systems thinking which involves looking at the entire system of care as an integrated whole, rather than discrete parts that operate in isolation. Healthcare leaders must understand that health means mobilizing multisectoral knowledge and resources and applying innovative and multiactor approaches to prevent, detect and address health problems. Since the 2014 Ebola crisis, healthcare leaders are increasingly using a systems approach by looking at the culture of health systems, the impact of diseases locally and globally, and the applicability of health interventions in different environments. In the post-Ebola era, steps to strengthen the healthcare system are described which includes the roles of healthcare leaders. These steps include deployment of field epidemiologists and community health agents, community education and fuller use of the One Health Platform, which allows actors from different sectors (human health, animal health and environmental health) to collaborate. Finally, suggestions for healthcare leadership training are offered.

This paper aims to explore President Obama's leadership style during passage of this major and controversial piece of legislation. Specifically it addresses the historical development of healthcare reform in the USA, and provides an ethical analysis of President Obama's leadership in pursuing the health reform initiative.

Based on a review of the literature, speeches, and application of leadership and ethical theory, an analysis was done of President Obama's leadership and ethical approach to healthcare reform.

This analysis revealed that Obama's behavior was consistent with the full‐range leadership model articulated by Bass and Avolio. Moreover, his personal and strategic ethical approach to promulgating healthcare reform incorporated both deontological and teleological ethical principles.

This paper provides a current look at President Obama's leadership style and demonstrates how incorporating different ethical theories can result in the same outcome.

The Health Service Executive in Ireland seeks to further develop healthcare in the community. It has identified that this reform requires developing leadership amongst the staff. This study aims to identify what kind of leadership staff in community healthcare observe in practice and their leadership preferences. The core objective has been to identify the readiness of the organisation to implement the adopted national policy of integrated community care reform in terms of leadership development.

An online cross-sectional survey was conducted using the Organisational Cultural Assessment Instrument, based on the Competing Values Framework. This tool identifies four overarching leadership types: Clan (Collaborative), Adhocracy (Creative), Market (Competitive) and Hierarchy (Controlling). Participants (n = 445) were a representative sample of regional community health care employees. They were asked to identify presently observed leadership and preferred leadership in practice. The statistical analysis emphasised a comparison of observed and preferred leadership types.

Participants reported the current prevailing leadership type as Market (M = 34.38, SD = 6.22) and Hierarchical (M = 34.38, SD = 22.62), whilst the preferred or future style was overwhelmingly Clan (M = 40.38, SD = 18.08). Differences were significant (all p’s < 0.001). The overall outcome indicates a predominance of controlling and competitive leadership and a lack of collaborative leadership to implement the planned reform.

During reform in healthcare, leadership in practice must be aligned to the reform strategy, demonstrating collaboration, flexibility and support for innovation. This unique study demonstrates the importance of examining leadership type and competencies to indicate readiness to deliver national community health care reform.

The study's aims are to identify healthcare innovation variables, explore innovative work behavior’s (IWB's) influence on Saudi health sector companies and evaluate the mediating function of transformational leadership in the link between IWB and healthcare organizations. In this backdrop, the purpose of the current research was to investigate the impact of creative work behavior on organizational performance and the role of transformational leadership in this process.

The objective of this quantitative cross-sectional study was to examine, according to 587 participants, the perceived elements of creative work behavior (RQ1). In various 10 departments of the 5 Dammam Health Network (DHN) in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, online questionnaires were used to collect data. SmartPLS 3 software was used to analyze the data.

The findings indicated that healthcare professionals perceive the elements of autonomy, competence, relatedness, motivation and knowledge sharing as key features that influence high efficiency in organizational efficiency (p < 0.001). IWB also had a significant and direct positive influence on organizational performance (p < 0.001). Transformational leadership behavior had an insignificant negative effect on employees’ task performance when considering organizational performance (P = 0.122). Therefore, the mediation role did not affect the relationship with IWB concerning employees’ task performance, suggesting that transformational leadership behaviors did not have a mediating effect on the effectiveness of employees’ task performance.

This article contains original analysis and interpretation highlighting integrating IWB and transformational leadership into Saudi Arabia's national healthcare system that can help address specific difficulties facing healthcare practitioners.