Application Assignent Wk 01 Personal Experience - District Hospital

In evaluating the readings and works for Frederick Taylor, Max Weber and Henri Fayol, I see the intermingling of all their works within my own organization - a district hospital governed by a five member board of directors. The organization draws from Scientific Management, and is structured somewhat as a bureaucracy which also pulls from Fayol's top down management approach. Yet without each individual piece serving as a function of our organizational structure, the organization would lack complete functionality.


As outlined by Fayol and Weber an organizational structure or hierarchy must be in place for successful management. In our organization the board of director's serves as the top tier in organizational structure and division of labor. Diverging beneath them is our Chief Executive Officer and thus begins the incorporation of both Fayol and Weber's management education and merit based hiring. Executives at this level are specialized in key facets of healthcare administration, with many having a foundation in management education. It is at this level that the organization takes on key components of Fayol's Management Process. This body focuses on future trends or what is now known as Strategic Planning and dictates organizational direction.


Through the incorporation of Weber's bureaucracy, however, the decision is not solely theirs. Major functions and decisions of the organization must be presented and approved through the governing board. The approval process varies depending on the types of rules and controls being implemented. For example, policies and procedures must be approved through three levels of hierarchy before finally being approved by the governing board and applied to the organization as uniformly applied rules.


Taylor's Scientific Management can be applied to the clinical component of the organization through the utilization of Best Practices - a systematic approach to patient care which dictates statistically proven effective treatments for optimal recovery times. Much like Taylor performed time studies the clinical world has conducted extensive research and studies to produce a set of orders which can be concretely linked to recovery. In the new federal regulations outlining care outcomes and as a result reimbursement for healthcare, delayed recovery will begin to result in disincentivizing inefficient recovery - much like Taylor disincentivized inefficient laborers.


As referenced in our readings, no one system serves as the sole management solution which is demonstrated through the incorporation of all three methods in our organizational structure.