Organizational Re-Design: Mercy Hospital and Medical Center
To operate more efficiently in the increasingly competitive world of health care, Mercy Hospital and Medical Center instituted a massive organizational re-design called Care 2000. In Mercy's former design, the simplest tasks were parceled out to a m...
Organizational Design and Change
Like Hospitals everywhere, Mercy Hospital and Medical Center has had to deal with drastic changes in a business environment that has become increasingly competitive.
Organizational Structure: Traditional vs. Non-Traditional
Although specific organizational designs vary from company to company, there has been a broad trend away from what might be called mechanistic organizational designs toward more organic ones. Mechanistic designs depend on centralized authority and m...
Power Imperative, The: Running the Show
Bureaucrats are often stereotyped as unaccountable because they are not easy to reach. Accountability, however, is much more subtle. It means being responsible to a number of constituencies beginning with the President and heads of the executive dep...
Power Imperative, The: Question of Effectiveness, A
The bureaucracy that was created in response to the challenges of the industrial revolution and the rampant spoils system that ensued may no longer be what is needed in the 21st century, both in terms of administrative structure and type of civil se...
Power Imperative, The: Bureaucracy and the Courts, The
The judicial branch cannot initiate control over the bureaucracy on its own. The courts have to operate on the basis of cases brought to them, as occurred in relation to the government's conflicting policies on tobacco. When the court directs an age...
Changes in Our Conception of Human Nature (Part Two)
Philosopher Ian Hacking continues his exploration of changes in the way human nature has been looked at over time. He notes that as cities began to grow so, too, did crime and poverty. As a result, resources which might have at one time been used to...
Federal Workplace, The: Shaping Policy
To an important degree, a federal agency or department shapes their own purposes by determining how a law will operate in practice. For example, late in the 1980s the Park Service changed its basic policy regarding fire suppression in the National P...
Speaking for the Voiceless
Dr. Astrid Heger, Director of the Violence Intervention Program at L.A. County-USC Medical Center, talks about the dual frustrations of having to deal with an often unresponsive federal bureaucracy, as well as the attitudes and beliefs of those who ...