Hairy Goals in Change Management: The Case of Implementing ICT-Supported Task Planning in a Hospital Setting

Abstract

The technological development in health communication systems changes premises for information flow and task planning to provide the patients the best possible treatment. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of hairy goals in the implementation of an advanced information and communication technology (ICT) task planning system in a hospital setting. The study is based on a qualitative, single instrumental case study. Forty-six in-depth interviews with employees from four different hospitals were carried out. Hairy goals had a unifying effect on employees from different professions and subcultures within the hospitals in the implementation of the new ICT-supported advanced task planning system. An agile project style in the first phase of the implementation caused some frustration, but was solved by self-organization and locally set learning goals. Our findings revealed a gap between the hairy goals set by the top management and the time it took for the self-organizing change principles of agile management to set in. This study indicates that goal-setting procedures should match the phases of the change process.

Key Words:

• Organizational change
• task planning
• health information ICT systems
• agile project management
• hairy goals
• learning goals

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge all the respondents in the research for generously sharing their experiences. The authors also thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions which improved the article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

We acknowledge the Helse Vest health region, Stavanger University Hospital and University of Stavanger for funding the project.