Public Lecture: Transforming relationships for high performance in health services: a relational model of organisational change
Professor Jody Hoffer Gitell, Professor of Management at the Brandeis University, delivered a lecture at the ANU on 17 February 2012.
Health and human service organisations face a challenging economic environment in the U.S. and beyond, with increasing pressures to reduce their costs while improving the quality of their outcomes. Yet many of these organizations are structured as traditional bureaucracies with workers trapped in their silos, producing poor quality outcomes at high cost. Evidence suggests that connecting workers with each other, their customers and their managers through relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge and mutual respect has positive implications for quality, efficiency, and worker well-being. But existing relationship patterns are deeply engrained, inhibiting the ability to change.
In this seminar, Professor Gittell will draw upon case studies in the U.S. health and human service sectors to develop a relational model of organisational change. This model suggests that meaningful transformation requires changes in the worker-worker, worker-customer, and worker-manager relationships.
Professor Gittell's model of organisational change is highly relevant to Australia's ongoing national health reforms, in which a major priority is the need to provide more integrated and connected care across the health system. As Australian health service providers can work in isolated groups where poor communication has a direct impact on patient outcomes, Professor Gittell's experience in U.S. health services will offer useful lessons for boosting the quality and efficiency of Australian health care organisations.
This lecture is brought to you by the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute at the Australian National University. For more information, visit: http://aphcri.anu.edu.au/lectures-pre....
