The role of top management teams in hospitals facing strategic change: effects on performance

Abstract

Hospitals around the world face phases of strategic renewal to change into flexible organizations that are able to offer higher quality services at lower costs. They face a crucial managerial challenge of changing their long-term strategic focus while avoiding short-term performance downturn. The management literature suggests that top management teams facilitate strategic change. In this paper, we analyze whether the top management team composition is able to handle the conflicting demands of increased long-term and short-term performance in organizations facing strategic change. Data were collected from 81 top management teams of Spanish hospitals in a survey-based study. We found that top management team diversity moderates the negative effect of strategic change on short-term performance.

Keywords:

• Strategic change
• Top management team
• Short-term and long-term performance

Acknowledgments

This paper was supported by the Andalusia Regional Government (project SEJ-4124) and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (project ECO2011-24613).