Quality leadership, technology integration and patient care quality across countries: moderating roles of national culture and infrastructure development
International Journal of Quality and Service Sciences
ISSN: 1756-669X
Article publication date: 13 August 2024
Issue publication date: 27 August 2024
Abstract
Purpose
To better understand the nature and effective delivery of quality health-care globally, this paper aims to study the role of quality leadership on patient care quality (PCQ) delivered in hospitals, including the intervening role of technology integration and two country-level factors – national culture and infrastructure development – in North America (Canada, Mexico and the USA).
Design/methodology/approach
PCQ comprises four facets: interpersonal, technical, environmental and administrative quality. Using survey data and interdisciplinary theoretical support (e.g. quality management and the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Project [GLOBE] model of national culture), this paper tested for moderated mediation between hospital quality leadership and the four-facet PCQ model with technology integration as the mediator and national culture and infrastructure development as moderators.
Findings
Results show that technology integration partially mediates the relationship between hospital quality leadership and PCQ and that national culture and infrastructure development shape the role of hospital quality leadership on PCQ. Hence, these national factors must be considered holistically to understand the impact of hospital quality leadership on patient care.
Practical implications
To improve PCQ, hospital leaders should broaden their understanding of quality health-care to include technology integration and an awareness of cultural and institutional differences across nations.
Originality/value
This paper used primary data from hospital quality leaders and the four-facet PCQ conceptualization across three large North American nations, offering a more global understanding of service quality in health-care.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The first and the fourth authors gratefully acknowledge the receipt of a Professional Enhancement Grant (PEG) from the Office of the Provost, Coastal Carolina University in 2018 which made the Canadian data collection possible.
Statements and Declarations:
All necessary ethics approvals have been obtained. The IRB approval for the data collection from respondents in the USA was obtained from The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley by the first author in his PhD dissertation in 2015 and it also covered the subsequent data collection by the third author from respondents in Mexico. The IRB approval for the Canadian data collection was obtained from Coastal Carolina University by the first and fourth authors in 2018.
The author(s) declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
De-identified hospital data used for this research could be deposited by the first author later in the specified secure location.
No LLM was used in preparation of this manuscript/study.
Citation
Chakraborty, S., Gonzalez, J.A., Sahagun, M. and Scheuer, C.-L. (2024), "Quality leadership, technology integration and patient care quality across countries: moderating roles of national culture and infrastructure development", International Journal of Quality and Service Sciences, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 389-412. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJQSS-09-2023-0137
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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