How Organizational Behavior Impacts Health Care

Organizational behavior is the study of the way people interact within an organization. The aim of organizational behavior is to facilitate efficiency within the organization. The better understood the interaction of workers within a group, the more likely it will be for the group to achieve its outcomes, as management will adopt strategies designed to support the group. Since patterns of behavior can impact and affect any organization, especially a healthcare organization. The provision of quality care relies upon health care providers working together to provide continuity of care, safe care and effective care—and if the organizational behavior of the healthcare facility is subpar, the patients and care providers themselves will suffer as a result. Leadership plays a substantial role in overseeing organizational behavior and, as Schyns and Schilling (2013) have shown, the less effective an organization’s leaders are, the less likely the organizational behavior of the workplace is to be productive, functional, and oriented towards achieving the organization’s vision and aims. This paper will discuss the applicability of organizational behavior to healthcare organizations and show why it is essential to focus on organizational behavior in order to maximize the potential of healthcare organizations.

Organizational behavior may be said to be a reflection of an organization’s structure, policies, culture and leadership. The relationship between organizational behavior and organizational culture, however, is two-way: the latter is influenced by the former but also can reinforce or undermine what the workplace leaders are aiming to achieve. The goal for leadership when focusing on organizational behavior is to ensure that behavior aligns with the organization’s aims, vision, and objectives.

Communication, collaboration, and support are variables that will determine the extent to which organizational behavior is effective or ineffective—or, worse, detrimental. In a healthcare organization, identifying how nurses communicate with one another to guarantee that patient safety is a number one priority is one example of how organizational behavior might be monitored. If it is found that there are large gaps in nurse communication lines, management will find it necessary to introduce a change in the workplace so as to close the gap and facilitate stronger, more effective organizational behavior. Knowing what the ultimate goal is (patient satisfaction, worker satisfaction), leaders can adjust or revise approaches among nurses so that inefficiencies are reduced and obstacles are cleared. As Bhargava (2012) has shown, behavior can be impacted both negatively and positively from any number of variables within the workplace—from workers feeling overworked to feeling unmotivated to feeling isolated, cut off or out of the loop. Finding the problems in the workplace and fixing them so that workers can feel more satisfied will, ultimately, lead to patients feeling more satisfied with their level of quality care. This is why organizational behavior is so important and so applicable to healthcare.

Personality, theories (models), leadership, and structure are all areas by which organizational behavior can be approached in order to understand how it can be improved or supported to facilitate an organization’s aims. Personality allows managers to focus on worker personalities, traits, patters of behavior and the manner in which they interact with others to determine where communication, for instance, is happening most and where it is happening least. Since communication is so vital in healthcare, it is an important measure in the case of organizational behavior. Theories and models can help management to define the parameters by which they will evaluate employee behavior and workplace conditions. The theory of Maslow’s (1943) Hierarchy of Needs, for example, presents an order of needs that humans must have met before they can become self-actualized. Using a theoretical framework such as this will give leaders a way to focus attention, in this case, on ensuring that worker needs are being met so that organizational behavior can be optimized and both worker and patient satisfaction achieved. Leadership can be an important approach to the issue of organizational behavior as well, since leaders are the ones tasked with inspiring, motivating, and communicating the vision of the organization to the workers. Their role in transforming, serving, and guiding workers is well established in the literature (Den, Deanne & Belschak, 2012). Likewise, the structure of the organization may be a good place to start—especially if the structure is disordered, not unified, or lacking in cohesion. Seeing how each of these variables may contribute to the understanding of organizational behavior is important.

There are also some pitfalls to be avoided when monitoring organizational behavior to enhance healthcare efficiency. The Hawthorne Effect, for example, is defined as a modification in employee behavior that occurs when workers know they are being watched. They subconsciously or consciously alter their behavior so that it is not actually reflective of their normal ways of interacting with others or in groups or of their attitude towards the organization.

When focusing on organizational behavior, it is good practice to also work on developing a workplace culture that will be supportive of the overall aims that the organization seeks to achieve. If in the healthcare facility, managers want to develop better communication among nurses to ensure that errors in care are mitigated and that continuity of care is preserved, developing an organizational culture that promotes communication, incentives nurses to conduct effective communication processes, and provides training in how to communicate effectively using standardized procedures will be a great step forward towards obtaining the organizational behavior that is desired by the facility. For that reason, focus must be given to identifying the goals that the organization wants to see in its workplace behavior. By identifying the behaviors that the organization wants to see adopted by workers, leaders can then begin implementing change in order to ensure that the workplace environment, culture and policies reflect this desire. The more infrastructure that is in place to support the desired behavior, the more likely is to be embraced by workers. When all the necessary steps are taken to ensure that a desired behavior is adopted, the risk of the Hawthorne Effect can be mitigated to some extent. There are also other ways that assessments can be made other than via direct observation of worker behavior. Other measures can include questionnaires, interviews, surveys, patient interviews, manager interviews, and so on. The main idea, of course, is that by knowing ahead of time what organizational behaviors should be cultivated, the organization can take steps to see that those behaviors are promoted, rewarded, and practiced in training sessions with workers.
By training, incentivizing and supporting specific organizational behaviors, the risk of employees “acting” a certain way when being watched and “acting” another way when not being watched can be diminished. The target behavior will be supported by the workplace culture and nurses will feel incentivized, for instance, to communicate effectively with other nurses and with patients because they know they will be rewarded for doing so—say, for reducing patient errors over a 12-week span.

Organizational behavior can greatly facilitate or undermine organizational productivity. In a healthcare organization, it is very important that leaders and managers be aware of how organizational behavior is impacting key aspects of quality care service. If communication is an issue among nurses, patient satisfaction may be negatively impacted. If leadership is a problem, worker attitudes and behaviors may be negatively impacted. If the workplace’s culture or structure are problematic or not appropriately geared towards supporting the objectives of the organization, worker attitudes and behaviors may be negatively impacted. Organizational behavior allows for the study of worker interactions. How employees interact among themselves, in groups and towards the organization will show whether the organization is maximizing its potential with regard to achieving quality care. The more effectively workers can collaborate, communicate and integrate in a healthcare organization, the more likely patient satisfaction and worker satisfaction is to be achieved. Organizational behavior is thus critical to organizational success because it is situated at the heart of organizational performance. What I learned from this study was that workers’ attitudes and actions are highly impactful on organizational aims—and this is especially true for nurses whose behavior can make or break a patient’s stay in a hospital in terms of whether the patient views it positively or negatively.