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As a profession, healthcare management values commitment to lifelong learning and continuous professional development. Individual participation, however, is voluntary and healthcare managers choose to participate based in part on perceptions of organizational support (rewards, promotion and recognition) as well as on individual values. As women are narrowing the career attainment gap, participation in development activities may play a critical role. This paper aims to present a pilot study which assesses the differences in male and female healthcare managers' participation in professional development activities and perceived organizational support.

An exploratory survey was emailed to current and past members of three professional associations who share similar missions “to provide educational and networking opportunities” for their members in the southern region of Florida.

The findings suggest that women healthcare managers are less likely to pursue professional development activities than their male counterparts even when the outcome (i.e. obtaining professional certification) is associated with career advancement and salary increases. Furthermore, men are more likely than women to attend multiple continuing education programs when paying out of pocket.

This pilot study is one of the first attempts to account for the factors that explain gender differences in pursuing personal development activities. Rather than conclusive judgments, it provides directions for further research.

As professional and leadership competencies become more ingrained in the industry, women may need to recognize and commit to development activities associated with healthcare leadership and management.

Competencies gained through professional development activities may impact career attainment.

This chapter takes a new approach to emotions through the lens of a relational identity among hybrid professionals, using those in healthcare as particularly relevant examples. Sharpening the focus on underpinning emotional dynamics may further explain how professional managers can be effective in hybrid roles. The chapter seeks to build on the internal emotional states of these professional managers by understanding how outward emotional displays might influence their subordinates. The understanding of how emotional states/displays in manager–employee relationships influence target behaviors may help multiprofessional organizations generate better-informed leadership practice in relation to desired organizational outcomes, e.g. more efficient and effective health services.

The purpose of this paper is to capture factors behind professional views of indicator usefulness as a common structure for assessing healthcare performance and their important characteristics to design limited key performance indicators (PIs) for holistic hospital management.

Two surveys were conducted using self-administered questionnaires, in which hospital manager/staff respondents were asked to rate the 52 PIs’ usefulness. In total, 228 manager and 894 staff responses were collected.

Eight factors were elicited from manager and staff responses as performance measures with 72 percent cumulative variance accounted for. Hospital managers and staff showed similar performance measure perceptions: high-utility acknowledgment on safety, operational efficiency and patient/employee satisfaction but relatively low-employee development concerns. Manager indicator usefulness perceptions were rather homogeneous and significantly higher than staff for almost all performance measures.

Homogeneous manager views mean that a single key PI set for hospital management may be established regardless of hospital attributes. The following aspects may be measures that should be managed in a healthcare organization based on their key PIs: patient/employee safety, operational efficiency, financial effectiveness and patient/employee satisfaction.

This is a pilot study on hospital management PIs in Japan. The eight-dimensional factor structure and findings about healthcare provider perceptions may be useful for healthcare management.

The purpose of this paper is to identify if aspects of organizational culture may indicate a new terrain in the cultural influences‐quality healthcare relationship. This research stems from the author's belief that viewing the role of head of department or directorate as pivotal to health care management is critical to health care planning and quality healthcare delivery.

Interviews were undertaken among 50 professional clinician and non‐clinician managers working in the role of head of department, in acute care hospitals in Ireland. The sample was drawn from the total population of 850 managers, utilized in a previous survey study.

Organizational culture is more complex than was previously thought. Several cultural influences such as excellence in care delivery, ethical values, involvement, professionalism, value‐for‐money, cost of care, commitment to quality and strategic thinking were found to be key cultural determinants in quality care delivery.

Health care managers perceive that in order to deliver quality focused care they need to act in a professional, committed manner and to place excellence at the forefront of care delivery, whilst at the same time being capable of managing the tensions that exist between cost effectiveness and quality of care. These tensions require further research in order to determine if quality of care is affected in a negative manner by those tensions.

Originality relates to the new cultural terrain presented in this paper that recognizes the potential of health service managers to influence the organizations' culture and through this influence to take a greater part in ensuring that quality health care is delivered to their patients. It also seems to be important that value‐for‐money is viewed as an ethical means of delivering healthcare, and not as a conflict between quality and cost.

This study aims to understand whether and how the use of performance measures in the context of healthcare organizations facilitates the dynamics of compromise or whether it creates moral struggles among a wide variety of actors. It offers novel insights into the concept of hybridity by investigating its underlying moral dimension. Drawing upon the sociology of worth theory (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991, 2006), this paper examines how actors negotiate and compromise over time concerning issues of justice, involving the use of performance measures on a day-to-day basis.

The article presents a single case study of a medical unit in a French public hospital. Data were obtained through the ethnographic method, semi-structured interviews and internal financial and accounting documents.

Unlike earlier accounting studies, the authors analyze whether, and how, accounting, on one hand, contributes to the dynamics of compromise between actors with divergent values that characterize hybrid organizations, and, on the other hand, increases tensions among actors with convergent values involved in caregiving. This offers practical insights into three relational mechanisms underlying the dynamics of compromise and their limits through the time dimension.

The authors use a single case study in a country-specific context.

This study helps managers of healthcare organizations to understand the relationships between the use of performance measures and their impact on the evaluation of worth in practice.

In terms of theoretical contribution, the authors show how the sociology of worth (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991, 2006) complements the analysis of hybridity and develop an original approach to understanding the ambivalent role of performance measures in bringing together divergent values within French public hospitals.

Managerial quality improvement (QI) in terms of accountability management has become central to healthcare institutions. Yet, managerial QI is largely considered irrelevant by healthcare professionals. In consequence, the implementation of managerial QI implementation is hampered. Knowledge brokering is discussed as a means to foster the implementation of (QI) knowledge in healthcare. Yet, the benefit of knowledge brokering for managerial QI has so far been neglected. Therefore, this research asks how knowledge brokering can support the implementation of managerial QI.

This article builds on a single case study approach as a unit of analysis. Qualitative data collection comprises 21 semi-structured interviews at the managerial and clinical levels, 220 h of participant observation and document analysis.

This paper identifies three strategies of how brokers implement managerial QI into a hospital by means of knowledge brokering: prioritizing, obscuring and redefining. The strategies help to transform multiple external QI demands into one managerial QI strategy. Yet the strategies also reduce non-managerial perspectives on QI, which generates frustration among healthcare professionals.

The paper works out the benefits and costs of managerial knowledge brokering. This allows to spell out practical implications for managers, nurses and clinicians who have to deal with managerial QI in healthcare organizations.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study managerial knowledge brokering practices as a means to implement managerial QI into healthcare organizations. By doing that, the article adds to the body of research on knowledge translation in healthcare.

This research examines how knowledge and information are managed within two care networks. We develop a conceptual framework drawing on the notion of brokering and the 3T framework, which is used to describe the relative complexity of boundaries (referred to in the framework as syntactic, semantic and pragmatic) as well as capabilities and processes required to exchange information within the network. Previous research on brokering has focused on healthcare managers and professionals, but this research extends to patients and caregivers. Understanding knowledge exchange and brokering practices in healthcare is critical to the delivery of effective services.

For this case research, non-participant observation and experienced-based interviews were undertaken with healthcare professionals, patients and caregivers within two care networks.

The findings reveal brokering roles occupied by healthcare professionals, patients and caregivers support the transfer, translation and transformation of knowledge and information across functional and organisational boundaries. Enablers and disablers to brokering and the exchange of knowledge and information are also identified.

The study is limited to two care networks for long-term conditions within the UK. Further research opportunities exist to examine similar care networks that extend across professional and organisational boundaries.

This research informs healthcare professionals of the brokering capabilities that occur within networks and the enabling and disabling factors to managing knowledge across boundaries.

This paper provides a conceptual framework that categorises how increased levels of knowledge and information exchange and brokering practices are managed within care networks.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how Finnish experts perceive future (year 2030) hospital management and leadership.

A total of 33 experts participated in a three-round Argument Delphi process. Opposing views of management and leadership in 2030 were analyzed using inductive content analysis.

The experts’ perceptions were divided into two main categories: management and leadership orientation and future organization. Perceptions relating to management and leadership orientation were classified as relating to patient-centred, clinical dominance, professionally divided and management career options. Perceptions relating to future management and leadership organization were classified as representing shared, pair, team and the individual-centered leadership. The results highlighted the most distinctive issues raised by the participants.

This qualitative study was conducted in the context of Finnish healthcare according to the principles of the Argument Delphi Method. The panel consisted of high-level experts representing a diverse set of roles. However, as suggested in previous literature, these experts may not be the most astute in predicting the future development of hospital organizations.

The findings can be used to develop and renew management and leadership training and management practices in hospitals.

The findings can be exploited in discussions, planning and decision making regarding future management and leadership in hospitals.

Only a few studies have investigated perceptions of future management in hospitals. This study adopted the Argument Delphi Method to identify distinct perceptions on the future orientation and organization of management and leadership in hospitals.

The purpose of this paper is to explore stakeholder expectations of performance within public healthcare services from a less-developed economic context – Zambia in this case. The study emerges from extant literature indicating potential variations in stakeholder conceptions and expectations of performance within public services.

The paper draws on institutional and structuration theories to investigate cross-sectional stakeholder expectations of performance together with power relations embedded within public healthcare performance expectations. Empirical data are drawn from semi-structured interviews with 33 stakeholders including legislators, policymakers, regulators of health services, healthcare professionals and health facility managers.

The findings not only reiterate the constructed and multi-dimensional nature of performance but also highlight the hierarchical configuration of stakeholder expectations linking macro-level health outcomes with micro facility-level service delivery processes.

The study points towards the need of harmonising the national performance measurement (PM) framework to ensure that macro-level goals are suitably cascaded and translated into micro-level service delivery processes through bottom-up structuration linkages.

In addition to filling the gap of explicating public healthcare PM practices in a less-developed economic context, the paper integrates insights from institutional and structuration theories to depict stakeholder expectations of performance through a multi-level and hierarchical framework.

The main purpose of this study is to define healthcare quality to encompass healthcare stakeholder needs and expectations because healthcare quality has varying definitions for clients, professionals, managers, policy makers and payers.

This study represents an exploratory effort to understand healthcare quality in an Iranian context. In‐depth individual and focus group interviews were conducted with key healthcare stakeholders.

Quality healthcare is defined as “consistently delighting the patient by providing efficacious, effective and efficient healthcare services according to the latest clinical guidelines and standards, which meet the patient's needs and satisfies providers”. Healthcare quality definitions common to all stakeholders involve offering effective care that contributes to the patient well‐being and satisfaction.

This study helps us to understand quality healthcare, highlighting its complex nature, which has direct implications for healthcare providers who are encouraged to regularly monitor healthcare quality using the attributes identified in this study. Accordingly, they can initiate continuous quality improvement programmes to maintain high patient‐satisfaction levels.

This is the first time a comprehensive healthcare quality definition has been developed using various healthcare stakeholder perceptions and expectations.