The hospital sector – and more broadly the healthcare sector - is increasingly under pressure to operate more efficiently and effectively and has to respond to the challenges of increased market orientation, changed legislation and providing demand driven care. The most crucial factor in taking up these challenges involves the people (managers, professionals, specialists, nurses etc.) working in this sector. Although policy makers in healthcare increasingly recognize that a well-motivated, appropriate skilled and deployed workforce is crucial for the success of health system delivery, empirical research focused on the added value of HRM in healthcare remains scarce. This thesis aims to fill this gap and is focused on enhancing our understanding of the process through which Human Resource Management influences performance in hospitals. The thesis builds on the strategic HRM literature, HRM process models, and climate literature and bridges ‘macro’ (organizational level) and ‘micro’ (individual level) research. More specifically, the thesis is focused on the mediating role of strategic climate in the relationship between HRM and outcomes. According to the strategic climate approach a strategic climate should encourage employees to respond and behave in ways that support the strategic objectives of the organization. The results in this thesis show that multiple strategic climate types can be distinguished (i.e. climate for quality, safety, and innovation) across the participating hospitals. Moreover, the results show that employee perceptions of the HR system help to create strategic climate perceptions, which in turn affect relevant employee outcomes. In order to take into account the specific characteristics of the hospital context, and to bridge the gap between research and practice, a contextually based research approach is applied.

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J.P.P.E.F. Boselie (Paul) , J. Paauwe (Jaap)
Erasmus University Rotterdam
hdl.handle.net/1765/31198
Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management (ESHPM)

Veld, M. (2012, February 3). HRM, Strategic Climate and Employee Outcomes in Hospitals: HRM Care for Cure?. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/31198