Quality management in the healthcare sector and the perception of an enabling formalization

Abstract: Organizational performance in the healthcare field is of great interest for many stakeholders. Efficient use of resources and delivery of high quality of care should be relevant to any taxpayer hoping to live healthily and grow old in Sweden. Simultaneously, the working conditions for the employees need to be sustainable if the impending lack of 170 000 workers in the healthcare sector by the year of 2030 is to be mitigated (Statistiska centralbyrån, 2012). The scope of this study is to examine how the quality management systems applied to ensure and improve the aforementioned objectives are perceived by the individual employees. Specifically, practitioners in the nursing professions are enquired about the design principles of enabling control as described by Adler and Borys (1996). The study has utilized a quantitative methodology and an online survey to collect personal perceptions and experiences from 400 individuals in the nursing professions on this topic. Major findings are that the majority of the respondents state that they perceive three out of four of the design principles of an enabling system to be present in the quality management system at their workplace. In addition, there is a strong association between the perception of the enabling characteristics flexibility and repair and general job satisfaction. Further studies with larger samples would increase the statistical power of these correlations. In addition, a large proportion of the respondents perceive that the quality management processes is negatively affected by financial constraints. Only a minority of the respondents perceive the workload constituted by tasks connected to quality management as reasonable.