CONCEPTS AND THEORIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
This research reviews concepts and approaches in applied organizational theory that may be expected to lead to improved staff motivation, improved organizational productivity in a psychiatric hospital, and higher levels of patient satisfaction with care received. Application of these concepts and approaches in the psychiatric hospital also may be expected to lead to reduced absenteeism and turnover among the professional staff.
With respect to human resource inputs, one concern is the management style that is likely to yield the most productive outcomes (Tonges, 1992, pp. 27-32). Most contemporary theorists tend to favor a participative style. Participation in the context of organizational management means permitting organizational members other than senior managers make some of the important organizational decisions (Barner, 1994, pp. 33-36).
Decision making in organizations has been described as a process of behavior with the economic model (or total rationality) at one extreme, and with the social model (or complete irrationality) at the other extreme (Kimberly and Rottman, 1987, pp. 596-619). This description implies that only irrational decision making accords human values precedence over economic values. In the health care organizational environments of the 1990s, leaders must find some middle ground between these extremes, for it is evident that neither set of values can be ignored (Morath, 1993, pp. 75-80). In many health care organizations, administrators have been confronted with the tasks of making severe, undesirable, and unpleasant cuts of personnel and services in a hasty manner, because, in part, they failed to heed economic values in earlier decisions. Similarly, organizations have often been forced to retract decisions, and to act in confusing manners, in chaotic situations, because, in part, they failed to heed human values in reaching earlier decisions....