About this Research Topic
This Call for Papers comes at a time of growing recognition in Healthcare that “healthy employees provide improved organizational outcomes” (e.g., patient care, productivity, costs, or efficiency). In particular, healthcare providers’ psychological and physical health is increasingly linked to patient negative outcomes such as death, hospital-acquired infections, and avoidable errors. Due to the nature of their jobs of caring for vulnerable people, their associated uncertainties about the effectiveness of treatment, and exposure to lawsuits, health professionals are rapidly becoming recognized as an extremely high-risk group. Added to this is the pressure of their constituting a rather small element in a large organization, on whose policies they exert practically no influence, and which is subject to unpredictable and frequent changes.
The organizational literature offers a wide range of theoretical models and empirical findings for improving employees’ health. Yet whether these theories cut across organizational contexts, or whether healthcare organizations provide a unique setting that requires specific attention, remains unresolved. Even in the organizational research done globally, the focus has been on employees’ health or on organizational and patient outcomes, and surprisingly only scant research has examined them together. Therefore, the second challenge for research is whether we have to choose between employees’ health and patients’ quality of care, or whether it is possible to combine them in order to obtain a superior health promotion system.
The main aim of this Research Topic is to focus attention squarely on the health–organizational outcomes balance. We seek contributions that can inform the development of an overarching context-sensitive theory that examines how to manage the balance across multiple levels of analysis. We encourage theoretical, empirical and review submissions that adopt quantitative, qualitative or mixed methodologies. Examples of topics include, but are not restricted to, the following:
• Exploring the pattern of relations between employees’ health and patients’ quality of care: Trade-off or complementary?
• Identifying the strategies employees develop for simultaneously maintaining their health and ensuring quality of care.
• Addressing theoretical and measurement issues for better understanding the concept of employees’ health.
• The role of organizational and job characteristics (e.g., leadership, structures, processes, and cultures) in balancing employees' health and organizational outcomes.
• New forms of work organization, interdependencies and coordination mechanisms in response to the challenge of balance.
• Transfer of best practices from other industries: What factors account for successful and unsuccessful transfer of best practices to healthcare?
The organizational literature offers a wide range of theoretical models and empirical findings for improving employees’ health. Yet whether these theories cut across organizational contexts, or whether healthcare organizations provide a unique setting that requires specific attention, remains unresolved. Even in the organizational research done globally, the focus has been on employees’ health or on organizational and patient outcomes, and surprisingly only scant research has examined them together. Therefore, the second challenge for research is whether we have to choose between employees’ health and patients’ quality of care, or whether it is possible to combine them in order to obtain a superior health promotion system.
The main aim of this Research Topic is to focus attention squarely on the health–organizational outcomes balance. We seek contributions that can inform the development of an overarching context-sensitive theory that examines how to manage the balance across multiple levels of analysis. We encourage theoretical, empirical and review submissions that adopt quantitative, qualitative or mixed methodologies. Examples of topics include, but are not restricted to, the following:
• Exploring the pattern of relations between employees’ health and patients’ quality of care: Trade-off or complementary?
• Identifying the strategies employees develop for simultaneously maintaining their health and ensuring quality of care.
• Addressing theoretical and measurement issues for better understanding the concept of employees’ health.
• The role of organizational and job characteristics (e.g., leadership, structures, processes, and cultures) in balancing employees' health and organizational outcomes.
• New forms of work organization, interdependencies and coordination mechanisms in response to the challenge of balance.
• Transfer of best practices from other industries: What factors account for successful and unsuccessful transfer of best practices to healthcare?
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
