Determinants of delegation of authority among hospital senior executive officers.
Item
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Title
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Determinants of delegation of authority among hospital senior executive officers.
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Identifier
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AAI9119677
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identifier
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9119677
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Creator
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Saccardi, Thomas Anthony.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Moshe Banai
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Date
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1991
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Health Sciences, Health Care Management | Business Administration, Management
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Abstract
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This empirical study of hospital managers' delegation of authority examined four research questions: (1) whether senior managers delegated important matters; (2) whether delegation was dependent on senior managers' trust in their subordinates and on their perceptions of the subordinates' level of skills; (3) whether nurturant senior managers differed from dominant managers in their perceptions of their subordinates' trust and skills; and (4) whether the personality traits of dominance and nurturance influenced the executives' styles of delegation.;The importance of twelve delegable tasks, interpersonal trust scores, perceived level of skills and personality trait scores were requested from forty-eight CEOs or senior executives of acute care hospitals with at least 200 beds. Their three most important subordinate managers responded to the delegation questionnaire.;Of the twelve delegable tasks, senior managers delegated six more than 50% of the time and four no more than 26% of the time. Two tasks were never delegated. Factor analysis of the delegated tasks produced three factors which were called supervisory, lateral and bilevel delegation.;There was no significant correlation between importance and the frequency of delegation. There were significant correlations between the senior managers' perceptions of subordinates' skills and both the overall delegation and supervisory delegation. Trust scores were high with little variation, precluding the study of low trust and delegation.;Factor analysis of the personality traits revealed three factors: nurturance, goal dominance and person dominance. There was no correlation between nurturance and either trust or skill. There was a significant negative correlation between person dominance and trust. The high goal dominant managers differentiated significantly less in assessing their subordinates' skills than did the low goal dominant managers.;This study's findings confirmed the importance of situational factors and called for a reexamination of personality factors in research based on attribution theory. The high trust scores questioned the applicability of the Leader-Member Exchange model to senior management. Finally, the significantly negative correlations of dominance with trust and skill further supported the premise that the exercise of power could at times negatively affect the way powerholders perceive the target persons.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
