This project will examine the job climate within the Material Management Division of a major publicly operated hospital located in the State of California. Job climate in the proposed project will be addressed within the context of employee job satisfaction. Information related to the problem to be investigated is presented in this chapter.
Dynamic change characterizes the American health care delivery environment in the 1990s. Within such an environment, institutional care providers in particular must develop and implement new and effective strategies if they are to remain viable entities.
The changes in the health care delivery environment result from a combination of factors (increasing costs of health care, changing societal values, advances in treatment therapies, changing demographics, and many others). Cost is a major factor involved in changes in the delivery of health care services. It
is, therefore, imperative for health care delivery organizations to develop procedures that will lead to more effective and more efficient operations. The improvement of quality in all aspects of a health care institution's activities has been linked to this goal (Cleverly and Harvey, 1992, p. 40).
When health care delivery and support organizations implement changes designed to lead to more effective and more efficient operations, the human resource complement in the health
care field is inevitably affected. Regardless of how laudable changes implemented by health care delivery and support organizations may be in intent, such changes may also be highly disruptive for specific components of an organization, and such disruption may lead to serious human resource management problems. The potential for the development of serious human resource problems exists in the Material Management Division (the participating organization in the proposed project) because of major quality and cost control initiatives by hospital administ...