Content area
Full Text
In the 1990s many health care organizations underwent reengineering. One of the unintended consequences of this process was a drop in employee morale. This article describes a project to improve morale in one hospital by fostering employees' constructive expression of dissatisfaction and of innovative ideas to senior leaders in the context of Employee Leadership Council meetings. Importantly, although formulated on the basis of employee suggestions, the hospital's president and chief executive officer initiated the project. After describing these councils, we examine the results of this experiment in employee-leadership exchange and explore the ramifications for the councils of the CEO's intimate involvement. Finally, we review lessons that might be transferable to other organizational settings as well as those that have implications for managerial understandings of organizational culture.
Key words: organizational culture, participatory action research, employee satisfaction, leadership, organizational change, United States
Children's Hospital and Health Center, San Diego (hereon, Children's), is an independent, nonprofit health care organization, offering comprehensive pediatric medical care through secondary and tertiary specialty outpatient clinics and inpatient care. Children's enjoys high public regard; of 178 pediatric hospitals in the United States, Child magazine ranked Children's seventh (Sangiorgio 2001). Employees generally take pride in being part of such an esteemed organization. Nonetheless, at a time when health care organizations are under intense pressure to do more with less, employee morale is one of management's topmost concerns.
Here, we examine a unique project undertaken to promote positive morale by fostering direct employee-leader communication in meetings convened by Children's senior leader for the express purpose of gaining insight into the organization as well as to provide direction on how to address issues raised. Senior leadership's role in managing change by fostering a positive cultural response among employees has received great attention of late (Committee on Quality of Health Care in America 2001; Haskins 1996; Hupfeld 1997; Lavin Bernick 2001; Ogbonna and Harris 1998a). We seek to add to that body of knowledge, supplementing not only management and organizational studies literature but adding to the applied anthropological literature as well, by demonstrating the value of actively including the topmost layer of senior leadership in organizational research. In the process, questions regarding the notion of organizational culture and its management are highlighted.
The anthropological perspective...