Assessing Organizational Readiness for the Improvement and Change Initiatives in Public Hospitals

Abstract

Despite the significant amount of research completed on the best method to manage the improvement and change activities, a high volume of research work discusses the need to evaluate the readiness aspect as an important point prior to any further act for applying new changes. This paper focuses on increasing the readiness of public hospitals in Saudi Arabia by analysing the interrelationships between organizational readiness and its impact on individual preparedness based on a mixed method approach to identify deficiencies in order to assess the potential for improvement opportunities. The research findings show that defect in organisational readiness can definitely cause significant issues for individuals’ readiness, which may result in a problem for institutions and their improvement initiatives, and this may hinder the success of any change activity. Based on the findings of this study, we recommend practices that could assist in overcoming these challenges. Generally, our results focus attention on individual’s attitude and willingness to change and this is argued to be a crucial factor that can lead to a success or failure of any improvement activity.