Towards a model of sustainable competitiveness of health organizations

Abstract

Over the last decades, around the world, the concept of competitiveness was long debated by economists (and others), widely used and even sometimes overused. Although at the theoretical level, a number of determinant factors of health care organizations' competitiveness have been proposed, their diversity and the little empirical data available argues for the need to create and validate a model of competitiveness of health organizations. The purpose of this paper is (considering the theoretical approach) to shape a model of sustainable competitiveness of health organizations. In this respect, a 51 item questionnaire was designed and applied on a sample of 291 respondents from 12 Romanian health organizations. The exploratory factor analysis undertaken recovered more than 69% of the common variability of the initial 51 variables and revealed four factors/dimensions of sustainable competitiveness of health organizations (Economic Dimension, Quality Dimension, Social Dimension, and Strategic Dimension). Among the results of the exploratory factor analysis is also the empirical evidence on the contribution of leadership and managerial processes to enhance the influence of all other factors/dimensions in increasing the sustainable competitiveness of health organizations, thus bringing into focus the concept of sustainable management and leadership. Being just in the exploratory phase of our research, the proposed model can, and should, be improved, thus opening up further research directions.