Introduction: Current State of the Organization
Mission: Providing Shelter to All Those in Need
The Waterview Nursing & Rehabilitation Center provides nursing services to the people in need of complex medical care, including both individuals and families. The organization provides both short-term support for the people temporarily suffering from a specific disorder and palliative care for people with terminal illnesses or senior citizens. Thus, the mission of the organization can be defined as providing people with a shelter where they can receive the necessary assistance: “Waterview residents receive the highest quality treatment by a team of talented and dedicated healthcare professionals” (About us, 2016).
Planning Methodologies: Defining the Future Course of Actions
Succession Planning as the primary strategy
The company adopts the principles of Succession Planning as the tool for identifying the company’s goals and delivering the performance of the required quality. The members of the Waterview Nursing facility deploy the principles of planning that allow them to address the emergent issues by taking one step at a time. The Succession Planning concept, in its turn, permits a gradual increase in the difficulty of the tasks and the complexity of the challenges to be met. As a result, Waterview Nursing passes the stages from level 1 (“no planning at all” (Carpenter, Bauer, & Erdogan, 2010, p. 619) to Level 5 (development of an elaborate plan that implies promoting change on all levels of the organizational framework).
Model-Based Planning: the company’s structure in a nutshell
When it comes to defining the way, in which the planning process is organized, one must give credit to Model-Based Planning as the tool that helped the organization become efficient and plan its actions successfully. The concept of Model-Based Planning can be viewed as a specimen of strategic planning (Hill, 2007) that presupposes creating a model applicable to a particular situation. As a result, the possibility of making a reasonable choice that makes sense in the context of the situation becomes possible.
Organization’s Strategy: Choosing the Right Track
Sustainability as the foundational value
The people working in the Waterview Nursing & Rehabilitation Center strive to attain high rates of sustainability in every area of the company’s operations. For instance, the concept of sustainability as the reasonable use of the existing resources of achieving the goal of the entrepreneurship, i.e., providing the target denizens of the population with the corresponding nursing services, is supported by every member.
Cultural sensitivity and diversity
Apart from the idea of maintaining balance in contemporary society and striving to meet the needs of the community, the Waterview Center promotes the ideas of cultural sensitivity and diversity as the basic concepts that define its course of action in the designated environment. The approach in question can be viewed as essential to the quality of the services as it implies meeting the needs of all stakeholders involved disregarding their ethnicity, nationality, religious beliefs, etc. More importantly, the approach under analysis encourages using the cultural specifics of the customers as the means of connecting with them and shaping the treatment approach accordingly.
The people That Matter: Defining Its Stakeholders
Customers: in need of care
Although Waterview caters primarily to the needs of senior citizens, the organization also provides extensive services to any person with health issues, including people with terminal diseases, a range of disorders, chronic diseases, etc. The given denizens of the U.S. population are the primary focus of the firm’s services.
Constituents: primary care types
As it has been stressed above, Waterview offers extensive services for the patients requiring long-term care, palliative care, respite care, and rehabilitation, as well as several short-term-care options. The latter include strike rehab, post-trauma care, and other types of assistance that do not require long rehabilitation.
Competitors: nursing homes in the vicinity
Naturally, the organization has to face rather high competition rates in the target market, which is saturated with other organizations and the services that they provide. Among the key competitors of the Waterview Organization, the Sapphire Center for Rehabilitation & Nursing of Central Queens and Dr. Benenson Pavilion deserve to be mentioned.
Firm Organization: What Makes the Company Tick
Formal Structure: Defining the Company’s Hierarchy
The rulebook: a set of rigid principles
Roles and functions: introducing staff to CSR. The actions of the company’s staff are coordinated with the help of the tool known as the Corporate Social Responsibility framework (Daft & Marcic, 2013). Implying that the staff members should assume their roles with due diligence and seriousness, the concept of CSR creates premises for a significant improvement in the quality department. However, as far as the company’s hierarchy is concerned, there are no rigid principles that the staff members are supposed to comply with. The roles and responsibilities can be shifted from one participant to another so that the process of services provided should not stop. While the given approach might be interpreted as somewhat convoluted, it prevents bureaucracy from intervening the entrepreneurship’s operations: “With no hierarchy and no titles, there’s no career ladder to climb” (Hamel, 2011, p. 10). As a result, without career-related distractions, the employees can concentrate on the needs of the patients closer.
Leading the Company to Success: Key Elements
Mode of organization: aimed at consistent growth
Striving for complete control over the departments and affiliates can be considered the defining characteristic of the firm.
The span of control: split into several large groups
Although Waterview is a comparatively large organization, its leaders prefer to maintain control over it by supervising large units as opposed to splitting the company into a set of smaller ones. The given strategy can be viewed as an extension of the P-O-L-C framework used for executing tough control over the entrepreneurship (Carpenter, Bauer, & Erdogan, 2010, p. 198).
Coordination: using IT tools for data transfer
Although technological proficiency cannot be viewed as the greatest asset of Waterview, the organization still makes very efficient use of the tools available. Particularly, the adoption of the corresponding IT devices as the means of hands-off communication among the staff should be viewed as a significant improvement. Furthermore, team managers are assigned with the duty to supervise a particular group and coordinate the actions of its participants.
Decision-Making Process: The Classical Model
Making decisions that directly affect the stakeholders and may cost them their health is a challenge. However, the Waterview Nursing organization has come up with a tool that allows it to improve the process of decision-making and, therefore, make the outcomes more predictable.
The model that the facility members implement is very close to the classical one in that it requires the identification of the situation and the factors affecting it, making a choice, and observing the outcomes. One could argue, though, that the current framework for decision-making could be improved significantly by replacing the existing strategy one with the approach suggested by Davenport (2009). To put it differently, the concept of institutionalization should be included in the current strategy so that a more accurate analysis of the strategic implications could be carried out.
Change Management: Transformative Approach
The leader of the Waterview organization knows well that people do not handle changes well, as the approach adopted to manage the alterations to the current design of the firm’s operations is carried out gradually and aimed at altering the employees’ behavioral patterns along with their roles and responsibilities. The idea of change that Waterview’s managers reinforce in the context of the organization is in line with Goleman’s interpretation of leadership as the ability to manage change; according to the researcher, a good leader is comfortable about the ambiguity and change that can be observed in the organizational setting (Goleman, 2004).
Leadership Style: Transforming People’s Vision
Organization’s Heroes: Ordinary People
Much to the credit of Waterview’s leader, the company does not set an unrealistic behavior model that the employees will be striving to acquire. Instead of applying the above cheap tactic, the firm promotes the idea that the people working for it are the heroes that everybody should look up to. Whereas it would be wrong to claim that Waterview glorifies its staff members, the firm puts a very distinct emphasis on the idea of the significance of ordinary people.
Motivational Environment: Encouraging People
Because of the adoption of the above model implying that people are the local heroes, the participants feel capable of attaining the results that the rest of the community will perceive as meaningful and impressive. Consequently, the employees become motivated to excel in their performance. The company managers should also be credited for adopting the approach that allows defining the individual needs of every single employee.
Though the identification of the staff’s needs and aspirations might seem excessive in the highly competitive environment of the global economy, where the efforts must be focused on improving the entrepreneurship’s strengths and searching for opportunities, the significance of the staff’s needs is not to be underrated, either. As aaa explains, “Mediocre managers assume (or hope) that their employees will all be motivated by the same things and driven by the same goals, that they will desire the same kinds of relationships and learn in roughly the same way” (Buckingham, 2005, p. 17). Good managers, however, focus on making the employees feel comfortable in the workplace environment so that the firm’s performance rates and, therefore, its profit margins, should rise consistently.
Organizational Communications: Reaching Out for Everyone
However, gaining the support of the employees is hardly possible without a proper communication strategy introduced into the company’s design. At this point, the above issue regarding the need to reach out for people instead of pursuing the financial goals of the company needs to be brought up: “Turning around, that manager is surrounded by the plush paraphernalia of his or her own company, the fruits of many people’s tireless work on structures and systems and techniques” (Gosling &Mintzberg, 2003, p. 7).
Herein lies the need to use the communication approach aimed at inviting all members to participate. The Waterview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, in its turn, has been developing the technological framework that creates the environment for an uninterrupted process of communication and data processing. As a result, the feedback can be collected and at the same time inform the company leaders regarding the existing dents in the communication approach.
Processes for Control: Supervision Tools
Putting the concept of quality in healthcare in the limelight, the Waterview Organization executes a tough control over its organizational processes. Although the idea of using reports as the key tool for maintaining close control over the quality of the staff’s performance, the Waterview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center implements the strategy of supervision. It would be wrong to claim that supervision as a tool for executing quality control I inappropriate.
Quite on the contrary, the concept of supervision has been approved by a range of researchers as the means of maintaining a semblance of order in the context of any economic environment: “Mintzberg found that the average time a top executive spends on any one activity is less than nine minutes, and another study indicates that some first-line supervisors average one activity every 48 seconds” (What is it like to be a manager? 2010, p. 3). However, one must admit that there are better options for managing quality and making sure that the employees meet the requirements. For instance, a flexible system of reports could be incorporated into the design of the entrepreneurship.
Where an Innovation Meets a Tradition: Managerial Practice
Organization’s Culture Through the Prism of Schein’s Layers
The organizational culture model suggested by Schein can be viewed as the means of connecting the roles and responsibilities of the participants to the values that the firm promotes. The task in question is a challenge since most participants are unwilling to change. Therefore, it is crucial to apply Schein’s model that uses artifacts and symbols to create values, which the staff members are going to be exposed to. Since Waterview Nursing uses its philosophy of striving for the clients’ wellbeing, the assumptions that the employees are supposed to develop align with the ones encouraged by the entrepreneurship.
Striving for Global Presence: Serving More Customers
Despite its efficient use of resources and a comparatively successful management model along with impressive performance rates, the Waterview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center has not gained a global presence yet. Establishing itself in the context of the global economy requires a substantial amount of money, which the firm cannot yet afford. However, pursuing expansion plans can be viewed as an opportunity for the firm at present.
Ethical Dilemmas: Virtue Ethics as the Basis for Problem Solving
Seeing that the benefit and wellbeing of customers are the focus of the firm’s efforts, it will be reasonable to assume that Waterview strives to maintain the concepts of the Virtue Ethics as the foundation for its philosophy.
Employee Empowerment: Randolph’s Empowerment Model
The model created by Randolph suggests that the staff empowerment should occur as a part of their professional development. In other words, the employees will be empowered with the opportunity for career growth and the acquisition of new skills. However, the chances to get smarter as the boost for the staff’s enthusiasm are only the tip of the iceberg. Researches show that people are enthusiastic about getting their opinions across and participating in the company’s operations once they sense that it will help them gain a better position in the company’s hierarchy (McCrum, 2010). Therefore, the Waterview organization must create an elaborate structure that will place each employee on the company’s scoreboard according to the effort made and the tasks completed.
Identifying and Resolving a Problem: Research and Development
The Problem to Be Addressed: What Needs Closer Attention
Unfortunately, even the Waterview Nursing and Rehabilitation center has its problems, the lack of patient-centered care being the key one. Even though the organization strives for meeting the needs of its every stakeholder, it is currently in need of a more elaborate approach toward the needs of its customers. Addressing the problem, one may note that the issue comes primarily for the increased rates of workplace burnout among the nurses. The phenomenon above, in fact, is rather common with a range of nursing facilities; according to recent reports, the problem has spread widely across the United States and requires an immediate solution.
The solution to the Problem: Change in Time Management
There is no need to stress the fact that the inconsistent time management strategy is the main factor affecting the rates of workplace burnout in the facility. Which is even more disturbing, the issue of workplace burnout is not something that the leader may fix easily with the help of a redesign of the corporate strategy. Instead, the head of the service must consider the time management approach adopted in the firm and help the nursing staff get their priorities straight.
Framework Required for the Change: Lewin’s Change Model
Implementing change in the workplace environment, one must primarily consider Lewin’s framework for change. Though being rather simplistic and incorporating only three steps, it helps cement the changes in the corporate realm, therefore, making the staff accept the proposed behavioral patterns.
Alternatively, Kotter’s change model (Zenger, Folkman, & Edinger, 2011) could be used as the means of reinforcing change in the corporate environment. The
Implementation Plan: Altering People’s Frame of Mind
To implement the model suggested above, one will have to take three simple steps. First and most obvious, an assessment of the current issues that the company is facing must be carried out. Once strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the Waterview Nursing and rehabilitation Center are identified, it will be crucial to promote change among the target audience. The process of altering people’s traditional behavioral patterns can be carried out by designing a model that the employees will comply with and suggesting both financial incentives and non-monetary types of reward to those who will excel in their adaptation process and the acquisition of the necessary skills.
Evaluating the Effectiveness and Efficiency of the Solution
To access the efficacy of the solution provided, one will have to compare and contrast the outcomes of the intervention to the situation that could be observed before carrying out the process of change.
Competency evaluation: Creighton Competency Evaluation Instrument
The Creighton Competency Evaluation Instrument was designed specifically for measuring the performance of nurses and healthcare experts. Therefore, it can be used to collect the data concerning competency rates among the target participants.
Considering the patients’ opinions: a survey
To make sure that the opinion of every stakeholder is taken into account has will have been heard, it will be necessary to incorporate the tool that will help retrieve information from every single patient. Therefore, using online tools to construct an opinion poll is crucial (Daft & Marcic, 2013).
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