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This chapter seeks to increase our understanding of health care employees' perceptions of effective and ineffective leadership behavior within their organization.

Interviews were conducted with 59 employees working in a diversity of positions within the case study hospital. Interviewees were asked to cite behaviors of both an effective and an ineffective leader in their organization. They were also asked to clarify whether their example described the behavior of a formal or informal leader. Grounded theory data analysis techniques were used and findings were interpreting using existing leadership behavior theories.

(1) There was a consistent link between effective leadership and relationally oriented behaviors. (2) Employees identified both formal and informal leadership within their hospital. (3) There were both similarities and differences with respect to the types of behaviors attributed to informal versus formal leaders. (4) Informants cited a number of leadership behaviors not yet accounted for in the leadership behavior literature (e.g., ‘hands on’, ‘professional’, ‘knows organization’). (5) Ineffective leadership behavior is not simply the opposite of effective leadership.

Findings support the following ideas: (1) there may be a relationship between the type of job held by employees in health care organizations and their perceptions of leader behavior, and (2) leadership behavior theories are not yet comprehensive enough to account for the varieties of leadership behavior in a health care organization. This study is limited by the fact that it focused on only those leadership theories that considered leader behavior.

There are two practical implications for health care organizations: (1) leaders should recognize that the type of behavior an employee prefers from a leader may vary by follower job group (e.g., nurses may prefer relational behavior more than managerial staff do), and (2) organizations could improve leader development programs and evaluation tools by identifying ineffective leadership behaviors that they want to see reduced within their workplace.

Health care organizations could use these findings to identify informal leaders in their organization and invest in training and development for them in hopes that these individuals will have positive direct or indirect impacts on patient, staff, and organizational outcomes through their informal leadership role.

This study contributes to research and practice on leadership behavior in health care organizations by explicitly considering effective and ineffective leader behavior preferences across multiple job types in a health care organization. Such a study has not previously been done despite the multi-professional nature of health care organizations.

Seeks to identify physicians' perceptions of possibilities and obstacles prior to implementing a computerised drug prescribing support system. Details a descriptive, qualitative study, with semi‐structured individual interviews of 21 physicians in the Accident and Emergency Department of South Stockholm General Hospital. Identifies four descriptive categories for possibilities and obstacles. Concludes that gaining access to patient drug history enables physicians to carry out work in a professional way – a need the computerised prescription support system was not developed for and thus cannot fulfil. Alerts and producer‐independent drug information are valuable in reducing workload. However, technical prerequisites form the base for a successful implementation. Time must be given to adapt to new ways of working.

Female leader is a major topic in the male of today that’s hardly getting attention. World today needs women in more positions of leadership. Today’s organizations need effective and agile leaders who understand the complexities of the rapidly changing global environment. This situation requires urgent attention as the world needs female as well as male characteristics to address global issues. Women represent half of the modern world’s abilities and population. They are important for economic and social prosperity for the world. Women carry a viewpoint that respects not only competitiveness but also organizational and team cooperation. Their female ideals are a functioning structure of new, cooperative and open economy. Eventually, the leadership of women will not only boost business, family and culture, but also the environment that will become more prosperous and peaceful as a result. In today’s modern world many researches are conducted on global, social and cultural forces, such as globalization, e-commerce, changing markets, the spread of technology and the need for teamwork, alliances and partnerships, show a high need for women leaders. But what is the role and leadership style of female leaders here? In this context, the purpose of this study is to discuss the leadership styles and what kind of leadership style female managers exhibit in line with the literature. The research showed that female managers have more agile leadership qualities and the authors suggested that female leaders should be brought forward for the opportunity to lead others toward a better future.

The aim of this paper is to study the relation between leadership behaviour of nursing managers and staff turnover with respect to the intervening variables “work climate” and “job satisfaction”.

Three different well‐documented questionnaires were used to assess perceived leadership behaviour, work climate and job satisfaction. Data on staff turnover were collected from a computerized follow‐up system. Different statistical analyses such as correlation analyses, regression analyses and analyses of variance were performed in order to explore the relations.

The results show strong correlations between leadership behaviour, work climate and job satisfaction. No significant direct relation between leadership behaviour and staff turnover was shown. Staff turnover shows statistically significant correlations with the job satisfaction variable “feeling” (p≤0.005), and the work climate variables “challenge” and “playfulness” (p≤0.001).

In order to limit staff turnover, decision makers should put effort into recruiting and retaining managers that perform very well according to the needs of staff. Managers that are both relations‐oriented and production‐oriented, can manage change and are able to stimulate the staff with challenges have the best opportunities to achieve low staff turnover.

To the best of the authors' knowledge there is no study published that explores the influence of leadership behaviour, including the dimension “change”, on staff turnover in relation to intervening intrinsic factors of job satisfaction and creative work climate in nursing.

Organizational culture is a determinant for quality improvement. This paper aims to assess organizational culture in a hospital setting, understand its relationship with perceptions about quality of care and identify areas for improvement.

The paper is based on a cross‐sectional survey in a large clinical department that used two validated questionnaires. The first contained 20 items addressing perceptions of cultural typology (64 respondents). The second one assessed staff views on quality improvement implementation (48 faculty) in three domains: leadership, information and analysis and human resource utilization (employee satisfaction).

All four cultural types received scoring, from a mean of 17.5 (group), 13.7 (developmental), 31.2 (rational) to 37.2 (hierarchical). The latter was the dominant cultural type. Group (participatory) and developmental (open) culture types had significant positive correlation with optimistic perceptions about leadership (r=0.48 and 0.55 respectively, p<0.00). Hierarchical (bureaucratic) culture was significantly negatively correlated with domains; leadership (r=−0.61, p<0.00), information and analysis (−0.50, p<0.00) and employee satisfaction (r=−0.55, p<0.00). Responses reveal a need for leadership to better utilize suggestions for improving quality of care, strengthening the process of information analysis and encouraging reward and recognition for employees.

It is likely that, by adopting a participatory and open culture, staff views about organizational leadership will improve and employee satisfaction will be enhanced. This finding has implications for quality care implementation in other hospital settings.

The paper bridges an important gap in the literature by addressing the relationship between culture and quality care perceptions in a Pakistani hospital. As such a new and informative perspective is added.

Equity is an issue that pervades all aspects of primary care provision for children and as such is a recurring theme in the Models of Child Health Appraised project. All European Union member states agree to address inequalities in health outcomes and include policies to address the gradient of health across society and target particularly vulnerable population groups. The project sought to understand the contribution of primary care services to reducing inequity in health outcomes for children. We focused on some key features of inequity as they affect children, such as the importance of good health services in early childhood, and the effects of inequity on children, such as the higher health needs of underprivileged groups, but their generally lower access to health services. This indicates that health services have an important role in buffering the effects of social determinants of health by providing effective treatment that can improve the health and quality of life for children with chronic disorders. We identified common risk factors for inequity, such as gender, family situation, socio-economic status (SES), migrant or minority status and regional differences in healthcare provision, and attempted to measure inequity of service provision. We did this by analysing routine data of universal primary care procedures, such as vaccination, age at diagnosis of autism or emergency hospital admission for conditions that can be generally treated in primary care, against variables of inequity, such as indicators of SES, migrant/ethnicity or urban/rural residency. In addition, we focused on the experiences of child population groups particularly at risk of inequity of primary care provision: migrant children and children in the state care system.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between leadership profiles and differences in managers’ own levels of work stress symptoms and perceptions of work stressors causing stress.

Cross-sectional data were used. Healthcare managers (n = 188) rated three dimensions of their leadership behavior and levels of work stressors and stress. Hierarchical cluster analysis was performed to identify leadership profiles based on leadership behaviors. Differences in stress-related outcomes between profiles were assessed using one-way analysis of variance.

Four distinct clusters of leadership profiles were found. They discriminated in perception of work stressors and stress: the profile distinguished by the lowest mean in all behavior dimensions, exhibited a pattern with significantly more negative ratings compared to the other profiles.

This paper proposes that leadership profile is an individual factor involved in the stress process, including work stressors and stress, which may inform targeted health promoting interventions for healthcare managers.

This is the first study to investigate the relationship between leadership profiles and work stressors and stress in healthcare managers.

Despite HIV being reported as one of the major global health issues, availability and accessibility of HIV services and supplies remain limited, especially in low- and middle-income countries. The effective and efficient operation of HIV supply chains is critical to tackle this problem. The purpose of this paper is to give an introduction to HIV supply chains in low- and middle-income countries and identify research opportunities for the operations research/operations management (OR/OM) community.

First, the authors review a combination of the scientific and grey literature, including both qualitative and quantitative papers, to give an overview of HIV supply chain operations in low- and middle-income countries and the challenges that are faced by organizing such supply chains. The authors then classify and discuss the relevant OR/OM literature based on seven classification criteria: decision level, methodology, type of HIV service modeled, challenges, performance measures, real-life applicability and countries covered. Because research on HIV supply chains in low- and middle-income countries is limited in the OR/OM field, this part also includes papers focusing on HIV supply chain modeling in high-income countries.

The authors conclude this study by identifying several tendencies and gaps and by proposing future research directions for OR/OM research.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first literature review addressing this specific topic from an OR/OM perspective.

As marketization has gained ground in elderly care, satisfaction with care has come to play a crucial role in designing for high-quality care. Inspired by the service-profit chain (SPC) model, the authors aimed to gain a deeper understanding of the intricate interplay between supportive leadership practices, organizational climate, job satisfaction and service quality in predicting satisfaction with care.

A Swedish sample of frontline elderly care staff (n = 1,342) participated in a cross-sectional questionnaire study. Mediation analyses were conducted to test the proposed model.

As predicted, engaging in supportive leadership practices was directly and positively associated with satisfaction with care. In addition, as predicted, this relationship was partially mediated by organizational climate and job satisfaction. Moreover, job satisfaction predicted satisfaction with care with service quality explaining a statistically significant part of this relationship.

Managers in elderly care services may improve satisfaction with care in multiple ways but primarily by showing that they care about the staff and ensuring that they are satisfied with their working conditions. Employee job satisfaction seems to be particularly crucial for satisfaction with care, beyond what can be accounted for by care service quality.

The authors proposed a novel service-outcome model. Adding to the original SPC model, the model in this study suggested previously unexplored relationships including a direct path between leadership practices and satisfaction with service and a multiple-mediator model explaining this relationship. Also, new measures of organizational climate and supportive leadership were developed for which satisfactory reliability estimates were obtained.

The objective of this paper is to test a selection of hypothesized relationships between: employees' perceived service quality; employees' turnover intentions; role clarity; and empowerment and coaching.

Drawing from theory, this paper develops a set of hypothesized relationships. The data collection is based on a survey with a sample of 1,076 frontline employees in service organizations.

There are indications that employees' perceived service quality has a direct negative effect on employees' turnover intentions. The effect of empowerment, coaching, and role clarity on turnover intention appears to be mediated through employees' perceived service quality.

This study is limited to a selection of variables related to employees' turnover intentions. Future research may focus on testing other variables that may be related to employees' turnover intentions.

This study stresses the importance for managers in service organizations to measure employees' perceived service quality. The results show that there are both direct and indirect relationships to employees' turnover intentions. The conclusion is that employees' perceived service quality is an important consideration with respect to employee‐turnover management.

This study has developed and tested a set of hypothesized relationships in the field of service management.