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1 – 10 of over 133000Gregory Stock and Christopher McDermott
The authors examine how physician staffing, human capital and knowledge spillovers are related to multiple dimensions of hospital operational and financial performance at the…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors examine how physician staffing, human capital and knowledge spillovers are related to multiple dimensions of hospital operational and financial performance at the organizational level.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use a data set assembled from multiple sources for more than 1,300 US hospitals and employ hierarchical linear regression to test this study’s hypotheses. The authors use multiple quality, efficiency and financial measures of performance for these hospitals.
Findings
The authors find that higher levels of staffing, skills and knowledge spillovers associated with physicians were positively associated with multiple dimensions of hospital performance. The authors find linear and nonlinear relationships between experience and performance, with the relationships primarily negative, and nonlinear relationships between spillovers and quality performance.
Practical implications
Hospital managers should consider increasing physician staffing levels if possible. In addition, the overall Final MIPS Score from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services might be included as a factor in determining which physicians practice in a hospital. Finally, if possible, encouraging physicians to practice at multiple hospitals will likely be beneficial to hospital performance.
Originality/value
This study’s findings are original in that they explore how physician-specific staffing and human capital, which have received comparatively little attention in the literature, are related to several different dimensions of hospital-level operational and financial performance. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is also the first to examine the relationship between the construct of physician knowledge spillovers and hospital-level operational and financial performance.
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Meghan E Hollis and Jeremy M. Wilson
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between community type classifications and police strength. Prior research has examined other correlates, but no attempts…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between community type classifications and police strength. Prior research has examined other correlates, but no attempts have been made previously to examine the relationship between community type (as outlined and defined by Chinni and Gimpel, 2010) and police staffing levels.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a combination of NDLEA data on police strength, Uniform Crime Report data on crime, census data, and Chinni and Gimpel’s (2010) community classifications, this paper analyzes the relationship between a variety of correlates and police strength in 15,917 communities.
Findings
The study found that police staffing does differ by community type as well as by a variety of other key community characteristics.
Research limitations/implications
This implies that further research on appropriate tools to determine appropriate staffing levels is needed.
Practical implications
This work indicates that traditional “peer benchmarking” approaches used to determine police strength should not be considered the best practice. Other approaches may be more appropriate and should be examined.
Originality/value
This is the first study to incorporate classifications of community type in the analysis of police strength.
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John Cheese, Abby Day and Gordon Wills
An updated version of the original (1985) text, the book covers all aspects of marketing and selling bank services: the role of marketing; behaviour of customers; intelligence…
Abstract
An updated version of the original (1985) text, the book covers all aspects of marketing and selling bank services: the role of marketing; behaviour of customers; intelligence, planning and organisation; product decisions; promotion decisions; place decisions; price decisions; achieving sales. Application questions help to focus the readers' minds on key issues affecting practice.
Roman Mennicken, Ludwig Kuntz and Christoph Schwierz
Hospital managers are confronted with decisions that have to account for multiple objectives, which may be in conflict with regard to efficiency and quality of care. In empirical…
Abstract
Purpose
Hospital managers are confronted with decisions that have to account for multiple objectives, which may be in conflict with regard to efficiency and quality of care. In empirical studies occupancy and staffing ratios as well as in‐hospital mortality are frequently used measures for efficiency and quality‐of‐care, respectively. Efficiency and quality measures vary on a daily basis. However, most empirical studies fail to take this variation into account, especially because data of daily staffing levels are lacking. The paper seeks to exploit the notion that staffing levels are planned according to expected occupancy levels, i.e. estimated daily occupancy levels account for unobserved daily staffing levels.
Design/methodology/approach
Using administrative data from 2004 for a sample of 62 departments in 33 German hospitals, the relation between daily occupancy levels and in‐hospital mortality count on the department level is analyzed. In an OLS‐framework the paper estimates daily occupancy level for all departments and then uses the predicted occupancy levels in a zero‐inflated Poisson (ZIP) regression framework to explain in‐hospital mortality count.
Findings
The results show a potential trade‐off relation between predicted occupancy rates and mortality. More specifically, the paper finds that the trade‐off relation is less pronounced in hospitals with a higher number of available staff per bed.
Originality/value
First, the paper shows evidence for a negative trade‐off between measures of managerial and medical performance on a day‐to‐day basis. Second, interactions between single measures of efficiency are modeled, namely predicted occupancy rate and staff per bed ratios, and policy implications are developed. Third, first empirical results in this respect using German data are presented.
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Does staffing contribute to organizational effectiveness and sustained competitive advantage, or are many of staffing’s implications merely cross-level fallacies? This article…
Abstract
Does staffing contribute to organizational effectiveness and sustained competitive advantage, or are many of staffing’s implications merely cross-level fallacies? This article provides a critical examination of staffing research and practice, and proposes a multilevel model of staffing that ties together micro (e.g. personnel selection), meso (e.g. team staffing), and macro (e.g. organizational strategy, Human Resources practices) theory, research, and practice. The model is both integrative and prescriptive, providing a basic organizing structure for examining staffing research within and across levels. The article begins with a review of multilevel theory, followed by a review and critique of the dominant staffing paradigms from a multilevel perspective. It is shown these single level paradigms cannot answer many of the primary questions of interest to staffing specialists. In contrast, the multilevel staffing model not only addresses these limitations, but also prompts a variety of new predictions that oftentimes run counter to prevailing wisdom. Staffing specialists are challenged to show how our science and practice contribute to better functioning organizations.
Library assistants were originally considered to be professional librarians in the making, and were trained accordingly. With the expansion of libraries and librarianship…
Abstract
Library assistants were originally considered to be professional librarians in the making, and were trained accordingly. With the expansion of libraries and librarianship, Britain's “apprenticeship” system of qualification gave way to formal library school education, and a new category of “non‐professional staff” was created, of people who were unwilling or unable to proceed to graduate‐level qualification. The development of non‐professional certificates of competence in the UK is described against parallel developments in the US, Canada and Australia; the COMLA training modules are also examined. The theoretical and practical issues surrounding training are discussed, training schemes and qualifications in the four countries analysed, and the relative merits of in‐house training and external certificate programmes argued.
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Adelina Gnanlet, Luv Sharma, Christopher McDermott and Muge Yayla-Kullu
As a way of alleviating nursing workforce shortages, health care managers are employing two types of workforce flexibility: supplemental staffing and floating among units. In this…
Abstract
Purpose
As a way of alleviating nursing workforce shortages, health care managers are employing two types of workforce flexibility: supplemental staffing and floating among units. In this paper, the authors investigate the moderating effects of two critical situational variables – namely, job-level workload and severity of illness (SOI) in a given unit – on the relationship between workforce flexibility and quality of care as assessed by the nurses at the unit-level.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors empirically test the relationship between a unit's floating of nurses and the use of supplemental workforce on the quality of patient care and the moderating role of patient SOI and job-level workload on this relationship using 357 hospital-unit observations.
Findings
The authors find that situational variables play a critical role in flexible staffing strategies and they should be accounted for carefully to obtain the best quality of care outcomes. The authors find that the well-known negative effect of supplemental staffing on quality of care is not universal and appears to be moderated by the situational factors studied in this paper.
Practical implications
For best outcomes, staffing manager who oversee multiple units should use supplemental staff on units that have lower job-level workload and on units that have high severity of illness. The authors also find that managers of units with patients who are less-severely ill should encourage nurses to float out and return to their home unit. This strategy will improve quality of patient care in the home unit.
Originality/value
While some research analyzes the direct link between flexibility and quality performance, how this relationship is affected by varying situational factors within a unit has not been studied so far.
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The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and…
Abstract
The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.
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Byoung-Goo Kim and Gyu-Bae Kim
The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyze what effects the headquarters’ (HQ) business strategy and corporate culture, the local network embeddedness of the foreign…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyze what effects the headquarters’ (HQ) business strategy and corporate culture, the local network embeddedness of the foreign subsidiary, and HQ-subsidiary communication have on the staff localization of foreign subsidiaries. The authors carry out empirical analysis on how localization of foreign subsidiaries ultimately affects the performance of foreign subsidiaries.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is an empirical analysis on the determinants of staff localization and the relationship between staff localization and corporate performance. In this study, the five hypotheses were proposed and tested using survey data. The authors randomly selected a total of 800 companies as subjects and conducted a survey. The final 222 survey data including HQs and subsidiaries were used for empirical analysis. The statistical analyses such as reliability test, factor analysis and regression were used.
Findings
This study shows that there was a higher level of staff localization by the foreign subsidiary when the investment goal was market-oriented investment, the Korean foreign subsidiary had stronger local network embeddedness and there was better HQ-subsidiary communication. In addition, the relationship between localization and subsidiary performance shows an inverted U-shape. Such results will give various implications to companies.
Originality/value
The research that takes a multilayered consideration on factors of the HQ, subsidiaries, and the HQ-subsidiary relationship is rare. To overcome such limitations, this study carried out a survey in order to find more in-depth decision factors. Specifically, this study analyzed the effects of three large aspects of investment goals and corporate culture from the aspect of the HQ, local network embeddedness from the aspect of foreign subsidiaries, and the level of HQ-subsidiary communication from the aspect of HQ-subsidiary relations, and how they affect staff localization.
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Angela J. Martin, Elizabeth S. Jones and Victor J. Callan
The purpose of this paper is to confirm predictions that employee reports of psychological climate, appraisals of change and levels of adjustment during a change programme would…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to confirm predictions that employee reports of psychological climate, appraisals of change and levels of adjustment during a change programme would be more positive for employees in higher status groups (operationalized as hierarchical level in the organization and occupational role).
Design/methodology/approach
Two questionnaire studies were conducted and data were analysed using Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). Study one examined differences among 669 public sector employees as a function of status (organizational hierarchal level). Study two examined differences among 732 hospital employees as a function of role (occupational group) and status (managerial responsibility).
Findings
The results of study one revealed that upper level staff reported more positive attitudes during change, across a range of indicators. The results of study two showed that non‐clinical staff reported more negative attitudes during change than other occupational groups. In addition, managers appraised change as more stressful than non‐managers, but felt more in control of the situation.
Research limitations/implications
A limitation of the paper is the cross sectional and self‐report nature of measurement. Future research could utilize a longitudinal design and collect alternative sources of data to indicate the constructs of interest, e.g. supervisor ratings of employee adjustment during change.
Practical implications
Together, the results of both studies highlighted the importance of implementing change management interventions that are targeted at the sub‐group level.
Originality/value
The findings of the paper add empirical evidence to the emerging literature on group differences in adjustment during organizational change. The paper will be of interest to academics and practicing managers, particularly those concerned with the effective management of change programmes.
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