Sustainable organizational performance: A study of health-care organizations in the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify factors affecting sustainable organizational performance, to build a framework for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) public health-care sector to facilitate sustainable organizational performance and to prioritize the factors for sustainable organizational performance.

Design/method/approach

The method used in this research is the quantitative method called the analytical hierarchal process (AHP) to help the decision makers in the public health-care sector to prioritize the factors that are affecting sustainable organizational performance. The method will also help to deal with the complexity of the sustainable organizational performance issue by interviewing nine experts in the field.

Findings

The findings of this research showed 21 sub-factors for sustainable organizational performance in the public health-care sector in UAE. It emphasizes that patient safety and quality of care are the most important factors for sustainable organizational performance.

Research limitations/implications

This study can be repeated by targeting other private hospitals in UAE. The novelty of this research means that it is the first study done in sustainable organizational performance in the health-care sector in UAE.

Practical implications

Health-care management can benefit from this research in many ways: Medical errors have a high impact on the hospital’s reputation and these determine the customer demand. Thus, the hospital’s management should give more attention to minimize the medical errors in order to have a sustainable organizational performance. This can be accomplished through clear protocols and procedures that may affect patients’ lives, the hospital’s reputation and organizational performance. Nevertheless, the policymakers should focus on society engagement; focus on social sustainability should be an integral part of their operational and business strategy. According to Abu Dhabi Health Authority (HAAD), the UAE has a highest rate of chronic diseases, such as diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular disease itself accounted for 36.7% of all 2013 deaths. The health-care sector should focus more on educating the community by conducting workshops, seminars and awareness campaigns across the UAE. In addition, decision makers in the health-care sector should spend more on continued improvement by focusing on lean activities that focus on waste minimization and linking the service quality to the hospital outcomes and patient satisfaction. The fourth highest overall priority weight for both transformational leadership and for the waiting time sub-criteria should also be considered by top management to focus more on hiring, retaining, and developing their transformational leaders, and to keep an eye on the waiting time and improving customer service. This will result in the sustainable organizational performance. Interestingly, all of the HR processes showed the lowest overall weights at 1%, which is a bit strange. HR should play more of a role in sustainable organizational performance, equal to the other sub-factors.

Originality/value

Originality of this research stems from a reliable and valid framework that can be subsequently used for measuring the organizational performance of health care organizations.

Citation

Al Hammadi, F. and Hussain, M. (2019), "Sustainable organizational performance: A study of health-care organizations in the United Arab Emirates", International Journal of Organizational Analysis, Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 169-186. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOA-10-2017-1263