Kash refines the health care strategic management framework

Multi-hospital system case study provides better understanding of the role of resource dependency theory and resource based view in health care strategic management

September 30, 2014

Bita Kash, PhD, MBA, FACHE, associate professor at the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Public Health, recently conducted a multi-hospital system case study to provide a better understanding of the role of resource dependency theory (RDT) and resource based view (RBV) in health care strategic management.

The study findings are reported in the article, “Health care strategic management and the resource based view” and were published in a recent edition of the Journal of Strategy and Management. In this article Kash proposes a refined health care strategic management framework that takes both RDT and RBV into consideration by systematically linking strategy formulation with deployment of resources.

“Our refined framework of health care strategic management suggests that decisions concerning development and deployment of key management resources and talent will eventually drive strategic decision making and define competitive advantages in the hospital sector,” Kash said. “This study describes, categorizes and groups similar strategic initiatives across the two multi-hospital sites and then compares strategy implementation approaches, primarily focusing on deployment of resources.”

Results of Kash’s analysis indicate a strong influence of RDT in health care strategic decision-making due to most U.S. hospital facing very similar external environmental constraints and factors. The study also reports important variations in strategy implementation approaches related to resource coordination and allocation, which supports the conclusion that RBV is most relevant to hospitals when engaged in implementation of mostly externally driven strategic initiatives. These results helped Kash and colleagues to develop a refined conceptual framework for health care strategic management that balances both theoretical approaches of RDT and RBV.

“We believe that as the RBV perspective gains importance in strategy implementation within health care organizations and other firms faced with a dynamic external environment of regulation and competition, it will gradually become part of the earlier stages of the strategic planning process,” concludes Kash.

Additional authors include Aaron Spaulding, PhD, University of North Florida, Larry Gamm, PhD, Texas A&M School of Public Health, and Christopher Johnson, PhD, University of Washington.