Sustainable competitive advantage in maternal and child health institutions: a dynamic capability approach

Abstract

China’s government has always attached great importance to protecting women and children’s rights and has made a consistent effort to promote their all-round health. The on-going medical reforms in the country have resulted in a falling birth rate and rising demand for increasingly diversified, multi-level healthcare services. Maternal and child health (MCH) institutions have had to implement more extensive changes and deal with greater challenges in order to survive and develop. MCH organizations thus need to find ways to improve their competitiveness. This study integrates qualitative and quantitative business analytics methods by conducting empirical research using varied techniques, namely the Delphi method and analytic hierarchy process (AHP). A panel of experts were consulted in three rounds of surveys, and the results were processed with AHP in order to develop an evaluation indicator model of MCH institutions’ competitive advantages. Ten hospitals were selected to verify the model’s applicability. Sensitivity analysis confirmed that the model has good stability. The proposed model highlights that human resources have the greatest weight as a determinant of competitive advantage. The findings, therefore, concentrate on people as the core resource, suggesting that MCH institutions can acquire and maintain competitive advantages based on three dimensions: department leader development, improved scientific research capacity, and a more flexible hospital culture.

Enhancing hospital resilience and planning capacity in scenarios of crisis using group decision‐making and interpretive structural modeling

“…In academic contexts, the concept of resilience is currently applied in a great variety of interdisciplinary research on interactions between people and nature (Klein et al, 2003;Xue et al, 2019), including in psychology, psychiatry, and sociology. Resilience is also a key term in biological fields of study, including, among others, genetics, epigenetics, endocrinology, and neuroscience (Herrman et al, 2011;Yuan & Ferreira, 2022). Wald et al (2006) note that resilience was first examined by researchers focused on maltreated children's learning processes.…”

“…Hospitals are complex social systems that are significantly improved by adequate organizational coordination, effective integration of members' attitudes and motivations, and good interpersonal relationships (Varela et al, 2023;Yuan & Ferreira, 2022). However, hospitals should constantly be updated, which generates new complications and challenges (Ferreira et al, 2022;Georgopoulos & Matejko, 1967).…”

“…Hospitals are complex organizations that provide a wide range of continuous healthcare services to the public, so experts often see hospitals as having quite diverse attributes and qualities. Common external analytical perspectives include production functions, technical and biopharmaceutical capabilities, information systems, and institutional and network concepts associated with multiple‐service providers and healthcare hubs (Cristian, 2018; Djellal & Gallouj, 2007; Yuan & Ferreira, 2022). From an internal point of view, hospitals are a combination of physical and administrative structures (Abrantes et al, 2022; Harris, 1977; Xue et al, 2019).…”

“…In hospital administration, internal and external variables are intertwined (Rosko, 1999; Yuan & Ferreira, 2022), which underscores the importance and challenges of determining the best way to improve hospital management practices. These factors are evaluated using different sets of indicators, thereby increasing the difficulty of analyzing and rationalizing specific logic models when seeking to enhance hospital resilience and planning capacity.…”

“…As a result, the NGT procedure had to be conducted online. The same quality of communication was maintained in the virtual interactions as in face‐to‐face sessions, and the online sessions were organized to facilitate the participants' open discussions and share in‐depth stories, especially about sensitive topics (Woodyatt et al, 2016; Yuan & Ferreira, 2022). All the meetings thus enabled a thorough exploratory study of hospital resilience.…”