Attention Allocation Of Hospital Middle Managers: Studies On Its Antecedent Factors And The Affect Mechanism On Team Rerformance

Nowadays, the problem of management effectiveness has become one of the focuses of organizational management research. Hospital is a mixed organization that has both professional and administrative characteristics, which is the main feature that distinguishes hospital management from enterprise and government management, and which has troubled China’s health care system reform as well. The hospital middle managers are both administrators and performers, who are the important carriers and supporters of effective management of the hospital. The very important and realistic question is that whether their management work can be effectively or not depends on the effectiveness of their attention allocation. Based on this, this study explores the attention allocation of the middle managers, aiming to reveal their work behavior and team-performance.The theoretical framework of the research is based on attention allocation, leader-member exchange, organizational culture, team psychological safety, team performance, etc. The samples of the research are the hospital directors. The research focuses on their attention allocation and tries to study under the regulation of organizational culture, how the directors organize their concentrations based on their own academic identity, that is, how they can distribute their limited time and energy to academic study, coordination and communication etc. Further more the research extends to study how attention allocation ultimately affects team performance through team psychological safety and under the regulation of the leader-member exchange theory. The route of the research is finally formed as "the department director’s academic identity → attention allocation →team psychological safety→team performance" and the conceptual model and research assumptions are set up.The research data comes from the questionnaire results about the department directors and doctors from the 15 "3-A" hospitals in China.2126 valid samples are used. Based on validity analysis, reliability analysis and group consistent test, the research tries to find the potential factors that may affect time allocation through descriptive statistical analysis. Secondly time allocation is used as the agent variable of attention allocation, by using regression analysis to study the direct effect of their academic background on attention allocation and the modulation effect of organizational culture. Finally the research tries to find the relationship among the middle managers’attention allocation, psychological safety and team performance and to test the regulation effect of leader-member exchange relationship.The empirical results indicate that:(1) the attention allocation of the hospital middle managers is significant route dependent, which is apparently influenced by their academic background; (2) their attention allocation is environment dependent as well, and the manager’s value orientation and focus of attention also tend to be merged and limited by the special situation of hospital organizational culture; (3) the effect of hospital middle managers’ attention allocation on team performance is realized through the mediation of team psychological security; (4) in hospitals, "attention allocation of middle manager-team psychological safety-team performance’" is modulated by leader-member exchange, and the positive role of emotional exchange is more prominent.The innovations of the research are as follows:(1) The author confirms and extends the previous conclusions of attention research in the mixed organizational circumstance as hospitals. The research reveals, in this scenario, the structural and situational factors that are related to middle managers’ attention allocation. The study also finds out that the attention allocation of hospital middle managers is significantly dependent on route and environment. It is also significantly influenced by their academic background. The manager’s value orientation and focus of attention also tend to be merged and limited in the special situation of hospital organizational culture.(2) An "attention allocation-leader-member exchange relationship-team performance" research framework on the level of team is put forward by the author. This research presents the mechanism of hospital middle managers’attention allocation on team performance, through the analyses of the mediating role of team psychological safety during this process. Furthermore, the cause-and-effect research framework of hospital middle managers’ attention allocation has been constructed.(3) The conclusions of this research will help us deepen our understanding of administrator time allocation in China which is a useful complement to time administrate research. The study finds out that middle managers’time allocation, the agent variable, does have a significant effect on team performance, which is effected through the intermediary variable of team psychological safety indirectly.No such empirical study of attention allocation based on special organizations like hospitals is found out presently. The results of this study have a reference value for understanding the administrative difficulty of a mixed organization as hospitals which has the characteristics of both professional and administrative characteristics. The results have some guidance and inspiration to the practice of middle managers. The research discusses the key issues which need to be focused in China’s hospital marketing reform. This study further brings about some suggestions and measurements to improve hospital management in China. Some limitations of this research and some proposals for future related researches are discussed as well at the end of this thesis.