Organizational change

This research by Noora Jansson from ouluhealth scrutinizes organizational change by combining discourse and practice approaches. A case study at a public university hospital is conducted with a narrative analysis method.

The key finding of this research is that discursive practices are involved in organizational change through discourse phronesis. Discourse phronesis is a socially and contextually developed phenomenon, and hence discursive practices are particular within context. The case study revealed four particular discursive practices as examples of discourse phronesis: field practices, mandate practices, priority practices and word practices.

The results of this research advance awareness of the concealed power within discursive practices and, more importantly, invite practitioners to pursue the intellectual virtue of discourse phronesis while implementing organizational change. Discourse phronesis may be utilized as a gateway to advance change goals and to translate various discourses and actions that otherwise might remain unexplained.

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This post was inspired by an article published in a newspaper by Xavier Marcet about the complexity to undergo a transition or change in an organization.

Photo Jordi Soldevila. Homenatge a Toni Catany Final

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Health Care 2030: the transition from hospital-based systems to primary care, community, and social care–based systems.

Health Care 2030: The Coming Transformation (2021) by Eyal Zimlichman, Wendy Nicklin, Rajesh Aggarwal, and David W. Bates

The problems in our health care systems include subpar quality and patient safety, a misplaced focus on acute care rather than on prevention and population health, inadequate person centeredness, and unsustainable cost.

The next decade will see considerable transformation in how health systems are designed, propelled by opportunities such as digital health, growing consumerism, and mounting financial constraints.

The Covid-19 pandemic has also necessitated and accelerated significant transformations.

The authors discuss gaps and barriers in the current design of health and health systems, and the needed escalation of transformation including transition from hospital-based systems to primary care, community, and social care–based systems.

They also assess the future evolution of payment systems leading toward sustainable health, changes in provider roles, and the entrance of new nontraditional players

Photo Jordi Soldevila. Homenatge a Toni Catany Austeritat

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Health is wealth? Can we substitute UK by Catalonia or Spain?

Andrew Haldane, Chief Executive of the RSA and former Chief Economist at the Bank of England, was invited by the REAL Centre to deliver the 2022 REAL Challenge lecture to generate fresh ideas and debate.

Health is wealth? explores why health is best seen as a societal asset before outlining some of the ways in which the resilience of health outcomes and systems might be strengthened for the benefit of all.

The UK continues to feel the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, both through its impact on the nation’s health, as well as the prolonged impact on the UK economy. The lecturer drew lessons from the pandemic and argued for a more holistic economic growth strategy where health and wealth are inextricably linked.

He believes... "the UK is suffering from a weakened, and weakening, societal immune system. As with biological immune systems, this is constraining both our capacity to grow and our resistance to shocks. A weak societal immune system explains why the UK has suffered anaemic growth, has been more prone to shocks and why it has had longer subsequent periods of convalescence than elsewhere – and than in the past. This weakened societal immune system in turn reflects a prolonged period of underinvestment in the sub-systems we rely on for growth and strength: from education and health care to housing and communities, to skills and innovation.

Rebuilding the resilience of these sub-systems holds the key to a strengthened societal immune system overall and, with it, improved growth, greater shock resistance and higher wellbeing for individuals. As society’s sub-systems are tightly coupled, each needs to be strengthened to secure system-wide success. The UK’s health system’s lack of resilience has contributed to the UK’s weakened immune system. But without a strengthening of other economic and social systems this, while necessary, will by itself be insufficient to strengthen society’s immune system".

How this resilience might be bolstered? He proposes a set of directions of travel for policy debate.

• Mesurement
• Stress testing
• Devolution
• Policy integration
• Placemaking
• Food standards
• Education
• Business
• Fiscal finance
• The social safety net

Article (pdf)  
Slides and Video


Photo Jordi Soldevila. Els Monstres d'Ingres. L'hivern

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Merry christmas and happy new year 2023

 

Photo Jordi Soldevila. 

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Generational conflict: what works for one generation will not work for all generations

A Study of Generational Conflicts in the Workplace. Steven H. Appelbaum, Anuj Bhardwaj, Mitchell Goodyear, Ting Gong, Aravindhan Balasubramanian Sudha, and Phil Wei (2022) Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

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This article reviews research around generational differences and examines the causality between these differences and conflicts usually happening at the workplace. 

The conflicts can be defined as 

• Value-based: Each generation has different views and work values that motivates them 
• Behaviour-based: 
• conflict comes from how each generation communicates. Research has shown that different generations do not communicate with each other
• conflict comes from the differences in the expectation of feedback. Gen Y requires constant feedbak on their work
• Identity-based.
• conflict arises when differences exist between the ways one generation sees their own identities and the identities of other generations
• conflict originates form the general sense of wanting to belonging to a group of by comparing themselves to other groups.

These generational differences also affect managers’ strategies when dealing with conflicts at work. Morton Deutsch’s theory of cooperation and competition is often used for organisations to understand the nature of conflicts, and the Conflict Process Model can be used to examine how conflicts can evolve. 

Studies show that once a generational conflict is identified and understood, organizations can mitigate and resolve the conflict by developing mentorship between the parties involved to embrace generational diversity. Various components of the HR activities should also be altered to adapt generational differences for an organization to attract and retain talents. However, some studies raised debate about the causality between generations and behavioural characteristics at work and argued the necessity of managing conflicts caused by generational differences, raising concerns that attributing conflicts to generational differences potentially oversimplifies the problems.

photo Jordi Soldevila. Màcules de Barcelona. Constel.lació blava

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The state of science in Catalonia

The Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation (FCRI), a private organisation set up in 1986, that disseminates research and innovation among society to promote scientific culture, careers in science and Technology and public-private relationships and entrepreneurship publishes its first report about the state of the science in Catalonia

The report starts from the analysis of the key elements that have allowed Catalonia to become a pole of knowledge and talent in Europe over the last two decades, both in the scientific research carried out in the universities and in the research centers, large scientific infrastructures and scientific parks.

The report highlights the main strengths of the Catalan research system, in terms of scientific publication and the management of research projects and the training of research staff. It also values ​​the capacity of the Catalan system for attracting Spanish and European competitive funds, and the fact that the research policies entrusted to 25 years have allowed Catalonia to be recognized internationally as a center for knowledge and talent.

The document also highlights five conditions in favor to the research ecosystem such as 

• the approval of the National Pact for the Knowledge Society, 
• the recovery in Catalonia de Department of Research and Universities, 
• the European strategy of the European Green Deal, 
• the Next Generation projects 
• the future Catalan Science Law. 

The report puts the attention to the measures that should be introduced into the knowledge system to guarantee the continuity of scientific quality indicators and the ability to attract competitive research funds: 

• the increase public and private investment in R+D+I, 
• support for the professional career of researchers 
• improve in the field of transfer and innovation. 

In the areas for improvement, the work points to the aging of the teaching and research staff, the difficulty for young people to start and consolidate a scientific career and the more than difficult reconciliation of family and work, which mainly affects female talent. The report is in favor of more internationalizing the workforce and encouraging the recruitment and retention of international talent. 

In terms of funding, the report emphasizes the need to substantially increase public and private investment in R+D+I, currently below the European average indicators. The report also recommends the necessity to connect the research and innovation ecosystem (the universities, research centers, sicentific parks...) with industrial and technological companies.  

Web access: https://estatciencia.fundaciorecerca.cat/

Report and indicators

photo Jordi Soldevila. Homenatge a Toni Catany. Plat Pobre

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Back to basics: Michael Grossman

The Health Economics journal publishes the Michael Grossman editorial related to the 50th anniversary of the publication of the demand for health model in “On the Concept of Health Capital and the Demand for Health,” Journal of Political Economy 80(2): 223–255, and in The Demand for Health: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation, NBER Occasional Paper 119 New York: Columbia University Press for the NBER.

The editorial focuses on the history of the model and its impacts on the field of health economics.

Editorial:  The demand for health turns 50: Reflections Michael Grossman

Michael Grossman and the Demand for Health Model

The Demand for Health introduced a new theoretical model for determining the health status of the population. His work uniquely synthesized economic and public health knowledge and has catalyzed a vastly influential body of health economics literature.

The demand for health is somewhat more complicated than the demand for a typical product. Here, the individual demands health and not health care. The demand for health care is, therefore, a derived demand.

The central idea behind Grossman’s model of demand for health is how age, education, health status, income etc. affect the production of health through the demand for health capital. Michael Grossman defined health both as a consumption good as well as a production good. He provided two reasons behind this; one health is consumed directly i.e. people are happier when they are healthier. Second, health is an investment i.e. good health permits people to do other things. Thus, the individual is both the consumer and the producer of health.

This model introduces the idea of investing in human capital (health and education) to improve outcomes in both the market (work) and non-market (household) sectors. The goal is to improve the earnings. Health is characterized as a capital good because it can be seen as lasting over time periods and depreciating at a non-constant rate.

Grossman bases his approach on Gary S. Becker's household production function model and his theory of investment in human capital. Consumers demand health, which can include illness-free days in a given year or life expectancy, and then produce it through the input of medical care services, diet, other market goods and services, and time.

Grossman also treats health and knowledge as equal parts of the durable stock of human capital. Consumers therefore have an incentive to invest in health to increase their earnings in the future. 

Grossman examines complementarities between health capital and other forms of human capital, the most important of which is knowledge capital earned through schooling and its effect on the efficiency of production.

He concludes that the rate of return on investing in health by increasing education may exceed the rate of return on investing in health through greater medical care. Higher income may not lead to better health outcomes, as wealth enables the consumption of goods and services with adverse health effects.

photo Jordi Soldevila. Homenatge a Toni Catany. Ampolles silencioses  

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