Political Realities at Magnolia Hills Hospital
Organizational politics concerns the pursuit of agendas based on individuals’ choices as well as their interests in organizations, sometimes without concerns about the impact; such pursuit has as the main objective the aim to accomplish individual and organizational objectives. Politics, consequently, plays an important role in any organization (Cropanzano & Kacmar, 2005). Depending on the choices that individuals make in an organization’s operations – choices that concern some interests in the respective organizations – goals will either be achieved or neglected. One of the major roles of politics in any organization is to build some influence on the workers. The influence could be either positive, thus making it easier to achieve goals, or negative, which makes the organization to lag behind in achieving its goals. Managers, as well as employees, have their political power, and could easily influence one another while at work (Amatayakul, 2013). However, because of the span of control in an organization, it is difficult for employees to induce their political power in influencing managers, but it is very easy for managers to use their political power to influence the employees.Political Realities at Magnolia Hills Hospital
In the case of Magnolia Hills Hospital, the negative impact of political power is reflected. The process of implementing the EHR system fails because of the influence of the political power of the management team. The fact that there is too much resistance from the physicians to use it shows its ineffectiveness. It is expected that a system that would bring some positive change as well as improvements would be highly appreciated by the employees. The system fails because it is always down for 4-5 hours a day. It implies that when it fails, physicians have to do things manually, which is somewhat tedious. It is not plausible and logical to have the struggles, yet there is an EHR system in the organization. The system also produces low quality prints. “When the HIM department printed out the reports to satisfy release of information requests, what they received was more like screen prints than forms.” Dr. Anderson, who was the brain of the system, is not a qualified IT professional to come up with such a system. Simply because the building bears his name, he picks up some cronies, who help him implement the system without involving the rest of the members of the institution.Political Realities at Magnolia Hills Hospital
Despite this, he informs the IT staff only; it shows that the rest of the stakeholders are perceived to be invaluable in the implementation process, which greatly contributes to their resistance to the implemented system. The training session also contributes to the failure of the system. The three weeks’ training session is not enough to teach the physicians to use it. It thus leads not only to resistance of the physicians in using the system, but also to high employee turnover, including the hospital administrator’s departure. To support the EHR initiative from the start, it would have been appropriate for the administration to seek help from qualified IT professionals in the IT department to come up with and implement the system, instead of allowing Anderson and his cronies to do the work. Informing the rest of the stakeholders in the organization would have supported the initiative, as it would have given the management team the thought of the stakeholders concerning the system. The IT department cannot continue leading teams using the mode reflected in Magnolia Hills Hospital because they do not handle their responsibility fully. They should have taken it as their work to implement the initiative and take the necessary steps to question the management team for allowing Anderson to implement the system.Political Realities at Magnolia Hills Hospital