Organizational Theory And Decision Making For Health And Social Care

Background of the Situation

Discuss about the Organizational Theory and Decision Making for Health and Social Care.

The health and social care sector relies upon the physical and social well being of society members. The social care sectors provide different kinds of health care services, which supports service user’s well being.  To provide quality health and social care service, proper management of the organization is very important for these organizations. In this context, organizational theory has a very important role. Based on the type of the organization, different organizational theories are followed by the health and social care organization, like the other corporate sector organizations (Nicolini, 2012). Organizational theory is referred to the approach, by which the organizational analysis is done. There are different perspectives, based on which the organizational theories are developed. The classical, neoclassical and environmental perspectives have been analyzed by many scientists; based on which the organizational theories has been developed. A strategy, which is adopted by the organization in a particular situation, may not be applicable to another situation, thus, a generalized standards should be established in the organization, which would be able to evaluate the suitability of a strategy in any kind of situation (Argote, 2012). Usually, organizations experience several issues regarding right decision-making. In this context, organizational theory has a significant role in providing a strategic direction to the organizational management. In this essay, the focus is the discussion about the importance of organizational theory on the decision making of Queenly Community health service. The organization provides counseling services to the community members, but the organization is experiencing some issues regarding client access. Understanding the importance and role of organizational theory can help to make right decisions about the strategies for improving the situation.

The main focus of this essay is to address the needs of Queenly community health service to understand the importance of organizational theory and to follow the suitable organizational theory, which help the organization to understand the correct strategic decision for the organizational well being. QCHS is a social service organization, which offers a wide range of services in their regional area. The care users are referred to the organization by their health care practioners or they are self-referred. The organization uses service model for delivering counseling services to the care users; which include an initial counseling appointment with the general counseling practitioner or a specialist-counseling practitioner (Hassard & Pym, 2012). While getting the appointment, the client’s current needs are assessed by the rostered intake-counseling practitioner, who is accountable for referring the clients to specialist or general counseling team of QCHS. According to their model of care delivery, a client has to wait for 3 months to come for the intake assessment appointment. Though the organization receives workforce cost CPI (customer price increase) to be increased per years, staffing is not increasing significantly. Thus, the organizational management is being inefficient to deal with these issues. Implementation of strategic decisions following a suitable organizational theory would help to deal with these issues (Battilana & Casciaro, 2012).

Importance of Organizational Theory in Organizational Decision Making

In this situation, the organizational model of care delivery should be modified for achieving more efficiency in care delivery along with the incorporation of some new strategy and practices for improving client access and organizational operations. Therefore, such organizational theory should be carefully selected, which supports organizational change. In this case, the contingency theory would be the suitable one for undertaking strategic decision in QCHS.

The organizational decision-making is one of the most important part in the management, which is supported by a suitable organizational theory. For instance, if the organization is facing issues related to staffing or client handling, the contingency theory of leadership can be followed. This theory states that based on the situational analysis, the leader should select the leadership style to be followed, which would beneficial for the organization. Aligning with the contingency leadership theory, the leader would adopt the right leadership style; as a result, the leader would be able to handle the complex situation in the organization. The contingency theory views the organization as a “constrained optimization problem”, thus, the organizational management should always try to maximize the performance by eliminating the internal and external constrains. In the context of QCHS, the organization is experiencing inefficient utilization of resources and inappropriate client handling, which can be mitigated by improving the leadership aspects. Blackmore and Sachs (2012) claimed that, according to the contingency organizational theory, there is no best strategy or way, through which an organization can make decision in any kind of contemporary situation. Rather, “the optimal course of action is contingent upon the internal and external situation”. 

Before making the strategic decision for the organization, with the help of the selected organizational theory, the current needs should be assessed.. As a result, the operations or practices undertaken by the organization are not meeting their objectives and expected outcomes (Seo et al., 2012). Therefore, the objective of the decision-making would be to modify the model of care, which would be more accessible ad effective for the clients. On the other hand, another priority is the utilization of the financial and human resource properly, for satisfying the clients.

Analyzing the situation at QCHS, it has been understood that the organization needs change management for improving the entire system. Therefore, the organizational change will be accomplished by renewing and managing the organizational operations. The human resource management system of the organization would have a key role in managing the operations, to support the change in the organization. In this context, the contingency theory of decision-making highlights that the effectiveness of an organizational decision depends upon different facets of the situation, based on which the decision is being made (Senior & Fleming, 2006).These features include:

• The level of relevant literatures acquired by the leaders and subordinates
• The importance of quality and acceptance of the decision
• The level of disagreement within the subordinates regarding the alternatives for change implementation

Operations

The first and foremost strategic decision that should be taken by the organization is improving the leadership style of the leaders. The managers and team leaders of QCHS counseling team should be trained to support the change. It is because, in organizational decision making regarding change implementation, the leaders plays a pivotal role in empowering the subordinates to adapt the change. Fred fielder, the developer of contingency theory argued that team performance is the result of the association between the environmental characteristic and the leadership style adopted by the leader (García-Morales, Jiménez-Barrionuevo & Gutiérrez-Gutiérrez, 2012). Therefore, a education session for the leaders and managers would be the initial strategic decision, supporting the contingency theory of decision making.  The education process for the leaders would include three sessions.

Module 1: Introduction to the new system, software and website designs and resource utilization

Module 2: Management and empowerment of organizational workforce through the change implementation period, with the adoption of transformational leadership style

Module 3: Handling clients with the new system for gaining beneficial outcomes

The contingency theory directs the organizational leaders to adopt transformational leadership style, because, this leadership style helps leaders to support change and to adopt leadership skills for encouraging subordinates. Based on this theory, the contingent leader should effectively apply his own style of leadership to handle the situation in a correct way. The next strategic decision that the organization should undertake, would be to utilize their financial resources, by recruiting an experienced financial analyst (Elwyn et al., 2012). From the situation analysis of QCHS organization, it has been revealed that, the organization is receiving customer price increase each year, but due to inappropriate utilization, the staffing positions are not anticipated for QCHS. Thus, the financial analyst would be able to identify the areas, where the management team is inappropriately utilizing resources. Based on the contingency theory of decision-making, the analyst would collect the resources from the leaders and team members and based on that the resource assessment would be done. An Electronic resource utilization software would be integrated in the management system. This system would be able to track the details of resource utilization in an electronic version, thereby enhancing the safety of the information. The stored data in this system, would be analyzed by the financial analyst. He would then be able to analyze the resource utilization by each component or department of the organization with the expected outcomes (Barry & Edgman-Levitan, 2012). For instance, if one area is identified, where a huge amount of financial resource is utilized, but expected outcomes are not reached, the analyst can cut the cost from there to be utilized in such a domain, where the expected outcomes are meeting efficiently. In this way, the staffing shortage can also be mitigated, by utilizing the financial resources in recruiting and training more staffs (Young, 2012). With more staff, QCHS professionals would be able to attain more patients at a time; thereby reducing client’s waiting time.

Client Access

To improve the client’s access, staffing should be improved by the organization. Several factors are affecting or hindering the client access in QCHS. One factor is lack of knowledge and skills of the service providers. Due to lack of knowledge about management of consumer services, the proper management of client’s needs is being hampered. As a result, the organizational management is being hampered, which is inducing issues regarding client management. Hence, introducing training session for the professional would be suitable for improving the client management. In the training session, the time management skills would be taught. The training would be aligned with the newly implemented model of care delivery. In this way, the internal skills of leaders can be improved, making them efficient in handling subordinates and clients (Carr & Beresford, 2012). According to the contingency theory, the organizational management should be able to implement different strategies based on the situation. QCHS needs to renew the operation and management system for improving client access. In QCSH, clients have to wait for more than 3 months, to get a n appointment. However, the organization can introduce online appointment option, which will help the clients to access the organizational website of get an appointment. A system can be integrated, which will help the professionals would be able to directly communicate with clients through video chat. It would eliminate the necessity of client’s waiting for more than three months. The system will include the development of a software, associated with organizational website, through which all the client related activities could be done (Catlin-Legutko & Klingler, 2012). The system would be able to record client’s information, date of appointment, personal and demographic information, follow ups, resources required for counseling, payment and other important aspects. It would make the process easier to handle and faster. The Client would not need to wait for months for needs assessment, as it would be done by video chat, through the same website. The system would also include the SMS reminder facility, to keep the track of client’s adherence (Knights & Willmott, 2012).  The leaders would play a pivotal role in the assessment and client management process, by applying democratic leadership style. The entire care delivery process would be discussed in the next part.

In QCHS, the model of care delivery includes the a rostered intake-counseling practitioner, who practices the need assessment of the clients and attempt to address the actual reason of counseling; and then, based on the priority and health needs, the generalized or specialized counseling appointment are set. However, sometime, based on the health priority, patients, who need emergency counseling, are attended by QCHS practitioners. The model of care delivery would be designed based on the contingency theory of decision-making. According to this theory, the change should be conveyed to the members and the goals should be set based on their acceptance or disagreement (Myers, Hulks & Wiggins, 2012). Therefore, initially, all the employees would be provided with a session regarding the organizational change and their consent would be collected. Based on their acceptance, the following model of care delivery would be implemented:

1. Contact with the client through QCHS website or telephone
2. Collection of demographic information and reference
3. Documentation and reason for counseling
4. Video chat with the client, through the organizational website and detailed needs assessment. This step will replace the “initial counseling appointment” for needs assessment.
5. Based on health needs, the client would be categorized, whether he should be appointed to a general or a specialist counselor.
6. Goals of counseling program would be set, based on client’s needs, following the contingency theory of decision-making.
7. The reminder would be set in the software with the name and client ID, which would also be immediately conveyed to the professional team or individual practitioner, to whom the client is being appointed. It will help to schedule professionals’ convenience.
8. An appointment date would be generated immediately and a reminder would be sent to client’s personal mobile number

With improved staffing, the waiting time of client would be reduced. Client’s would get an appointment within 1-2 week of the initial needs assessment

1. All the resource required for the client would also be documented electronically
2. A gentle reminder would be sent to the client, via SMS one day before the scheduled appointment by the HR department
3. After the first session, based on the requirement, client would get online follow-up counseling session. Face-to-face counseling would only be applicable to the emergency patients
4. All the documentation would be in the electronic version
5. Each client’s data would be conveyed and discussed with the team, and the analyst will keep the track of resource utilization.
6. After completion of the counseling sessions, feedback would be collected, which would be used for further change management.

Above discussion shows, the importance of organizational theory in decision-making has been understood. It reveals that, contingency theory is the best-suited organizational theory for QCHS. This theory reveals that leaders should use the best leadership style for decision-making in contemporary situation and there is no way by which an unique strategy can be implemented at any organizational circumstances. In QCHS’s situation, the leadership and decision-making strategies should be prioritized (Pearson, 2012). Thus, contingency theory directed the requirement of adopting transformational leadership style by the organizational leaders. It helps the leaders to guide their subordinate during change implementation. On the other hand, the contingency theory of decision-making helped the management to consider the acceptance or disagreement of the staffs before implementing the change. It influences the leaders to use democratic leadership style, following the contingency theory, where leaders can adopt the best leadership style to deal with the situation through the correct strategy (Shore, 2012).

Conclusion

In this essay, the focus was to discuss the importance of organizational theory in context of QCHS’s organizational conflicts. Based on the situation, the contingency theory has been selected and followed for change implementation in the organization. Following an organizational theory is important for analyzing the situation and selecting the best possible strategy to resolve the organizational conflicts. Here, the improvement in leadership, an organizational system development and financial analyst recruitment has been discussed as the possible strategic decision for QCHS. 

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