The Hospital Cooperation of America does not employ an authoritarian approach to its leadership. The organization believes in empowering its employees as a key leadership strategy.
In one instance, the management plans to choose a suitable system that the organization can adopt. The management of the organization assigns the responsibility of choosing the most suitable system to a group of employees with an equal representation from all the departments (Frist & Wilson, 2003, p.20).
This team reportedly went ahead to identify the system and made most desirable recommendations after analyzing the weak points of the present system. This kind of empowerment to employees helps to bring out the best and motivates them. I highly recommend it.
The organization is both transformational and transactional. The transformation it undergoes since its inception reveals its transformational characteristic. ‘Dr.Thomas Frist Sr.’ started the hospital in the year 1960.
He later joined hands with two other friends to raise funds and resultantly formed the now popular Hospital Cooperation of America. The organization then expanded further and absorbed many groups of hospitals, which it put under its management.
Rapid expansion of this cooperation saw it manage hospitals managed by other companies and organizations. In the year 1969 alone, the hospital put 10 hospitals under its management. Following its rapid growth to date, the organization is now one of the largest business organizations in America.
The usual fact that the organization is a profit making institution that charges the medical service it gives makes it assume a transactional role. The desire to expand using the proceeds from its services reveals the desire to generate more funds hence the transactional nature.
The functions of these organizations entail providing high quality and cheap medical care to humans. This function comes out when one analyzes the kind of employees the organization has. The organization’s emphasis on quality makes it take new employees through training in order to make them live to the standards that the organization desires (Kleber, 2001, p.32).
The type of managers a company hires also speaks volumes about the emphasis it lays on its functions.
The organization hires high quality managers with good leadership qualities that are result oriented. Through its managers, the organization carefully utilizes its monetary resources, labor and empowerment of employees to give high quality and cheap Medicare aimed at improving people’s lives.
The organization also expands its client base by making medical care accessible to rural communities by constructing numerous hospitals in the marginalized areas and taking over the management of hospitals that were under private ownership.
The vision that the founders created for this organization was to provide quality and cheap medical care to individuals, make Medicare accessible to marginalized communities and improve the living standards of humans.
The management of this organization greatly value employee motivation. According to ‘Casenote Legal Briefs (CLB)’…”they involve the employees in making important decisions because they believe in employee empowerment” (2009, p.12). In one particular instance, the cooperation involves representatives from all its departments in a move to change the system through which the organization operates.
Since the strategy actually succeeds in the end, this action makes the employees feel important people in the organization. As a result, they get highly motivated. The rapid expansion of this cooperation over time coupled with the presence of a huge work force of about 183,000 employees is an evidence of the positive result of employee motivation.
Because of this motivation, more and more people are interested in joining this esteemed and highly successful cooperation. The organization also encourages good performance in its workforce by offering rewards to good performances. By rewarding good performances, the managers are able to initiate the spirit of hard work their workforce.
The cooperation communicates its vision through the activities its huge workforce engages in. Its provision of high quality medical care clearly comes out in its huge and quality workforce. The workforce is highly qualified and once a new employee joins the cooperation, he/she undergoes extensive training that makes them deliver according to the expectations of the management of this cooperation.
The cooperation further communicates its vision in making medical care to be available to marginalized communities by constructing more hospitals in these areas and taking the management of privately owned hospitals in these areas.
Lastly, the organization communicates its vision in improving people’s living standards by providing employment to a huge number of personnel. The hospital has the capacity of approximately 183,000 workers. Indeed, employing such a large number of workers directly improves their living standards.
The cooperation is indeed a good agent for change. This trait clearly comes out through its numerous projects that bring positive change both internally and externally. The numerous expansions that the organization undergoes make it appear as an agent of change. The impact of these expansions is always far reaching.
First, the organization creates numerous employment opportunities. As such, it improves people’s living standards. Positive change by the cooperation through numerous expansions also makes medical care available to underprivileged communities in the United States.
References
CLB. (2009). Health Law Furrow Greaney Johnson Jost Schwartz 6th Edition. New York: Aspen Publishers Online.
Frist, W., & Wilson, S. (2003). Good people beget good people: a genealogy of the Frist Family. Maryland, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Kleber, J. (2001). The encyclopedia of Louisville. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky.