The role of the human dimension in organizational agility: an empirical study in intensive care units

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of hospital leaders and high-performance work practices (HPWPs) in intensive care units (ICUs) in organizational agility and its impact on healthcare personnel satisfaction.Design/methodology/approachThis study was carried out in three ICUs of an important Spanish public hospital, one for adults, one paediatric and one neonatal. The unit of analysis was ICUs personnel (324 individuals: 14.5%, 48.8% and 36.7% from the categories of doctors, nurses and nurses' aides, respectively) who were invited to participate in the study. The sample had 248 individuals, with a sampling distribution by categories that was quite similar to that of the population. To test the hypotheses proposed, structural equations modeling (SEM) were used as the maximum likelihood estimation method.FindingsThe results confirm the proposed model and reveal the importance of the human dimension in ICUs on hospital agility and performance in terms of satisfaction of the clinical staff working in this area.Originality/valueThis paper is original because it analyses units of high complexity, such as ICUs from a management and non-clinical perspective. In addition, it studies the role of hospital managers and HPWPs on employee outcomes, as well as in-hospital responsiveness in a very dynamic context that demands agility on the management approach.

How job crafting builds organizational agility in a government-dependent NSO: the mediating role of organizational climate

“…From a human resource perspective, managers can use flexible leadership styles to foster employees' creativity and to reach organizational agility (Singh et al, 2013). Furthermore, Melián-Alzola et al (2020) found that organizational agility would be achieved through the job satisfaction of essential workers.…”

“…Organizational agility generally refers to an, "organization's ability to effect on market changes and take timely actions and offer new solutions so as to cope with a dynamic and complex environment" (Overby et al, 2006, p. 131). Although the existence of agility has been demonstrated in previous studies (Cegarra-Navarro & Martelo-Landroguez, 2020), particularly regarding information technology management (Melián-Alzola et al, 2020), Di Minin et al (2014) stated that agility is a strategic tool for managing organizations as it refers to an organizations' quick and rightful response to the external environments. In this field, Darvishmotevali and colleagues (2020) argued that in highly dynamic and complex environments, organizations must reduce the bureaucracy to manage the challenges of uncertainty.…”

“…Previous research has mainly focused on organizational structures as managerial tools of organizational agility (Cegarra-Navarro & Martelo-Landroguez, 2020;Melián-Alzola et al, 2020), rather than the proficiency of human resource as individual practices. The above studies are important as they refer to the bottom-up process of employee management and job crafting in which employees redefine job schemes resulting from the design of their jobs individually (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001).…”

“…Developing the job demand-resource (JD-R) model, Tims et al (2010) demonstrate that human resources individually and collectively change an organizational environment to be more agile in terms of work meaningfulness (Fried et al, 2007), proactive behaviours (Grant et al, 2010), and in-role performance (Tims et al, 2014). Some evidence also shows the impact of human resource practice on organizational agility whether in industry-based contexts (Melián-Alzola et al, 2020) or government-dependent organizations (Shabani Bahar, 2017). Thus, research shows that organizational agility depends on human resource function and job attitudes.…”

Supporting agile innovation and knowledge by managing human resource flexibility

“…We base our discussion and conclusions on a meta-analysis of the Web of Science’s Collection in the period 1997–2021 to develop research propositions and outline some organizational changes and analytical tools to pilot transitions to agile. The focus, first, on HR flexibility is because employee matters are one of the main pillars of agile innovation and a driver of organizational changes (Krstić et al , 2018; Walter, 2021; Melián-Alzola et al , 2020). The way to manage HR flexibility is a key element of innovation processes as the tacit knowledge that resides in multi-skilled employees and external research and development (R&D) experts is required to accelerate sprints (iterations in agile innovation).…”