Knowledge Management Performance in Health Organizations

• Autor(a) principal: Pereira, Nuno Miguel Maia
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/13251
• topic: Características do Conhecimento; Desempenho; Desempenho dos Processos Internos; Fsqca; Fuzzy-Setqualitative Comparative Analysis; Gestão de Conhecimento; Medidas de Implementação; Organizações de Saúde; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Gestão de Unidades de Saúde

Creation, organization, distribution, and application of knowledge are critical to managerial activities in healthcare organizations, giving relevance to knowledge management. However, the literature and empirical studies are scarcity in this context. To fill this gap, this study aims to investigate the relationship between knowledge characteristics, implementation measures and knowledge management performance. This study applies fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) methodology to evaluate the sufficient and necessary conditions that explain the high performance of knowledge management as outcome of interest. Data were collected through a questionnaire sent to the Director Nurse/Clinical Council Nursing Member, Clinical Director/Clinical Council President and Training Center Director of 156 Portuguese health organizations, from the public, private and social sectors. We got 101 answers out of 468 possible, representing a response rate of 21.6%. All the answers were considered valid. The results reveal that high performance could be achieved through different combinations of conditions and that there are no significant differences between the combinations in both outcomes of interest. The findings highlight the relevance of explicitness and volatility in both internal processes and overall performance. Information infrastructure show impact to internal processes and incentive programs to overall performance. The study also points the absence of appropriability is relevant in most settings for the interest outcomes. The obtained results allow us to conclude the importance of knowledge management and its characteristics on health care organizations. The study aims to provide a process that will add to other models of knowledge management performance, based on a configurational approach with fsQCA methodology, focused on necessary and sufficient conditions for high knowledge management performance. This model can help healthcare professionals and management to evaluate their current knowledge management processes and the potential to improve their knowledge performance further. Practitioners can use the informative concepts and solutions that come from this study to make deeper and richer assessments of how they build, diffuse, capture and implement knowledge, dealing with its characteristic specificities. Practitioners and policymakers should note that, according to our results, health organizations with higher performance in knowledge management show a predominance of formal, complex, dynamic, and non-proprietary knowledge. They rely on information infrastructures that ensure availability, storage and sharing of knowledge and maintain incentive policies that increase professional commitment to systematizing operational rules and procedures. The expertise development can make the difference in dealing with the unpredictability of clinical situations and patientcentered care and human resources planning must consider organizational goals and context to a higher efficiency and effectiveness. The main result of this approach comes from the evidence that different paths could induce the same outcome of interest, that there are many solutions to address the unique organizational and contextual characteristics, which allows the organizations to reach the same high knowledge management performance. Knowledge management policies and programs should be designed according to these organizational and contextual characteristics to provide organizations with the resources needed to achieve high efficiency and effectiveness, high quality of service, patient satisfaction and safety.