Hospitals Are Driving Toward a Leaner Organization

1. This case study is a classic sample of open system perspective presented by Mcshane and Von Glinow when they discussed the perspective of organizational effectiveness theory. First of all, according to the open system perspective, organizations depend on the external environment resources. Same as the case study, use lean management at these hospitals depends on number of patients, instruments, supplies, and indeed, the staffs like doctors and nurses. Moreover, Flinders Medical Center managed its incoming emergency patients to the appropriate environment. It indicates that the medical center has a good environment fit. Furthermore, the hospitals were able to reduce time that patients spent in the hospital. Although there were the same among of doctors, nurses, and the other staffs, these hospitals worked more effectively and efficiently by use lean management.

2. Lean management is likely to work perfectly in the hospitals. However, it tends to ignore a perspective of organization effectiveness like stakeholder perspective. The hospitals focus on reducing waste on the process in order to earn more their own benefit, and ignore stakeholder. For instance, patients or customer are push because lean management sees lines and waiting areas are wastes that have to illuminate, thus, it might increase stress to patients who are not familiar with the hospitals’ environment. For the long term, patients still get a good service is questionable. Not only the patients are push, but also doctors, nurses, and the other staffs. They are expected to work more efficiently with no increase wage. The hospitals seem like to forget the value of their employee. Meanwhile, Corporate social responsibility could be ignore from lean management.

3. It could be risky if managers do not understand lean management deeply. Some processes seem like lean management, but it is not, so, it is easy to misunderstand. For example, transferring a task to other departments, or push their...