Introducing Time Limit at Which Patients Must Be Attended - Assignment Example

Tutorial Questions Student Name Institution Course Code Date of Submission Tutorial 4 The article may have a negative impact on various ways. Primarily, the idea of introducing time limit at which patients must be attended to may need more efficient system in the investment on more hospitals and equipment such as bed and other necessities. It again may jeopardize the quality of medical care given out or administered to patients as medical doctors and nurses may take into consideration the factor of time as opposed to quality of services offered. It is also evident that those patients delayed in emergency are those that require serious in-patient admission and therefore, the four-hour threshold may not apply or rather fail to be effective. This may put doctors and nurses at pressure of meeting timelines, which may affect quality medical care (ABC News, 2010). Additionally, time limit will increase doctors and other medical attendance to experience work stress and hence poor performance. Considering the importance of medical field and its delicate nature, medical attendants need to act under stress free environment. In line with this idea, fatigue is likely to result on doctors as they struggle to attend to patients. This will more likely affect the activities of medical attendants and may even affect their lives outside profession. Tutorial 5 Goleman clearly identifies that while IQ is a common requirement for leaders, emotional intelligence (EI) that makes a great leader and the factor that differentiates him from common leaders. IQ and technical skills are the primary needs for leadership positions whereas EI is the sine qua non of leadership. Goleman breaks down EI into five categories that include Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation, Motivation, Empathy, and Social Skills. The author also points out clearly that while EI is important for all levels of leadership, it becomes increasingly important for use at higher levels of leadership and management. Goleman also points out that EI can be learned through deliberate learning and consistent feedback. The ideas put forward by Goleman are important in organizational behavior because individuals will view on-the job interaction as a means of gaining more opportunities to practice. In addition, a self-aware leader will know his limits and yet still challenge himself. Self-regulation means that leaders will have a full control of their feelings and thus effective leadership. Likewise, motivation, empathy, and social skill are equality important attributes for effective leadership and organizational behavior (Goleman, 1998). Tutorial 6 The Space Shuttle Challenger 51-L was the 25th mission in NASA's STS program. The Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff on January 28, 1986, claiming lives of all the seven-crew members and destroying the vehicle as well. The STS 51-L primary mission was to deploy the second Tracking and Data Relay Satellite alongside the Spartan Halley's Comet observer. The tragedy resulted from various poor decision-making processes. Although its destruction was purely hardware-based in its solid rocket booster, the human decision to launch the rocket was, in itself, flawed. The ethics of whistle blowing, communications, group decision-making, and the dangers of groupthink are among the major issues that led to the disaster. This is more so because despite warnings from engineers, the NASA’s management team decided to launch the Challenger. The groupthink that planned the launched had many gross errors that included overestimation, poor collective realizations, stereotyping, and poor inherent morality of the group. However, the Challenger disaster is one of the occurrences that remain one of the most researched case studies in groupthink decisions. According to Janis (1992), the most important three antecedent conditions of groupthink that include high group cohesiveness, structural faults, and situational context that include moral dilemmas would easily be avoided through a rational process and the encouragement of variety perspectives from group members. This would easily help organizations arrive at the best decisions that suit their goal achievement. Tutorial 7 Group thinking is a major concern in most decision-making processes. However, in most cases, groups comprise of intellectuals and highly experienced individuals yet they still blunder in the process of making decisions. This may result in later consequences. Such blunders arise from some groupthink dynamics that may vary from individual wish to the general group objectives and goals (Janis, 1992). Members of a certain groupthink need to be loyal to the group by constantly sticking to the group policies in whichever state they are. It is also necessary to motivate members of a decision-making group for them to avoid harshness in their judgments and opinions. This will also encourage members to engage in a soft line of criticism and engage in a manner that does not spoil the well feeling of the discussion atmosphere. Agreement in every group is so vital as group members engage in non-deliberate suppression of highly critical thoughts through internalization of norms inculcated in the group. It therefore means that, for any groupthink to reach at a conclusion and come up with the best choices in decision-making, they must be able to participate in open airing of objections and be free to participate in positive criticism aimed at directing the debate into finding solutions to the existing problem. In this regard, organizational decision-making process that calls for the attention and contribution of various parties as a group needs a clear strategy to ensure that every member of the groupthink feels satisfied and justifies the decision reached at through a mutual understanding and fair contribution (Dessler, 1976). To attain such understanding and to allow organization benefit most from groupthink decisions, it is important for the groupthink members to adhere to the group norms and values. Tutorial 8 Dunford argues out that organizations are a daily encounter in human life as individuals involve themselves with organizations in various capacities as students, patients, employees, and clients among others. However, according to Dunford, an organizational behavior is one complex factor that needs careful consideration and clear perspective on its form. In this regard, the author expounds Morgan’s (1986) four images of an organization as a machine, organism, political system, and as a culture. As a machine, an organization behaves like a purpose-driven device through transformation of inputs such as raw materials, skills, and capital into various forms of products and services. This is because an organization has sets of goals and objectives a set of guidance to ensure achievement of the objectives (Dunford, 1992). As an organism, an organization is treated as a living entity with its parts differentiated and interdependent on each other. The context within which an organization operates is in such a way that its parts are in a continuous interrelationship. This means that factors such as the need to respond to constantly changing environment do govern the mechanism of an organization. This calls for organizational survival and adaptation to the environment. Likewise, organization viewed as a political system is an idea seen from the perspective that participants in an organization interact with the pursuit of varied interests. Just like in politics, such interests are both of great consensuses and conflict as well. The purchase of labor also is another important factor making organizations more political (Chia, 1996). The tension rising between organizations to buy the best and most qualified labor is quite conflicting with different organizations wanting to take control of power while others engage in various tactics to compete with other organizations. Finally, an organization as a culture looks at the shared beliefs, values, and meanings among organizations. In conclusion, the four metaphors are each important in shaping organizational behavior and its success. It is however worth to note that every metaphor has its shortcomings. Tutorial 9 Duncan (1989) introduced a unique and elaborate way of explaining organizational culture that remains one of the most prominent topics of research today. This article by Duncan develops an involving argument that organizational culture is dependent on the influence of the characteristics of the industry and environment within which the organization operates in. Thus, organizations within an industry do have shared cultural elements deemed necessary for the organizations to thrive and succeed and survival. The author however claims that strong cultures can affect the bottom line of organizational set up either positively or negatively. Therefore, just like any other aspects of organizations, culture needs proper management and alteration that contributes to the effective accomplishment of goals. The triangulation technique introduced by Duncan shows that a subculture in organizations exists in organizations that acts as a counterculture in many respects (Duncan, 1989). The argument is so useful in shaping the course of organizational culture and performance since organizations come together in sharing common norms for their operations and thus efficient realization of objectives and goals. The triangulation technique is useful as it provides a base for practical and expansive methods of measuring organizational culture with which recommendations for managers are made for effective management. Tutorial 10 Through several case studies of over 100 companies, John Kotter observed that most companies are constantly reshaping themselves into better competitors than their counterparts in the same industry. The constant transformation entails quality management and improvement, reengineering operations, restructuring the entire company, cultural change, and reshaping to the right size. The most common goal for these transformations is to enable companies cope with constantly changing business environments. However, in most cases, only a few of these transformation efforts are successful while others fail. According to Kotter (1995), change is not achievable instantly but rather a process that involves numerous phases that may usually take a long time. Therefore, skipping any step for change can only present organizations with an illusion of success yet does not produce satisfying results. Secondly, the research is useful, as organizations will learn that making critical mistakes in any of the phases need for transformation can bring quite devastating impacts such as slowing momentum and adverse previous gains. The findings by Kotter are even quite useful since even the most competent manager in an organization can easily make one big mistake. Reference ABC News 2010, 4 hr emergency target could have negative affect, viewed 11th Feb, 2013 from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-11-23/4hr-emergency-target-could-have-negative-effect/2347744 Chia, R 1996, Organizational Analysis as Deconstructive Practice, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Dessler, G 1976, Organization and Management: A Contingency Approach, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall. Dunford, R 1992, ‘Perspectives on organisations’ in Organisationalbehaviour: an organisational analysis, Addison-Wesley, Sydney. Goleman, D 1998, ‘What makes a leader?’,Harvard Business Review, vol. 76, no. 6, pp. 93-102. Janis, I, 1992, ‘Groupthink: The desperate drive for consensus at any cost?’, in Shafritz, J and Ott, J (eds.) 1992, Classics of Organizational Theory, 3rd ed., Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, Pacific Grove, California, pp. 193-200 June, M 2006, Trust-in-supervisor and helping coworkers: moderating effect of perceived Politics, Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21(6), 518-532. Kotter, J 1995, ‘Leading change: why transformation efforts fail’, Harvard Business Review, vol. 73, no. 2, pp. 59-67 Lee, H 2004, The role of competence based trust and organizational identification in continuous improvement, Journal of Managerial Psychology, 19(6), 588 – 607 Read More