Behavioral operations in healthcare organizations

Continuous improvement initiatives have proliferated among manufacturing and services organizations. In this context, knowledge has been claimed to play a key role, as a significant antecedent of an organization’s ability to continuously improve its operations. At the same time, attempts to implement knowledge management initiatives prove fruitless if employees are not fully motivated and engaged, and our present understanding of how to promote and facilitate such behaviors in an operations management (OM) setting remains, as yet, limited. This study introduces and empirically tests a theoretical model that explains knowledge-sharing behavior among employees, and links it also to their innovative behavior. Building on the well-established Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), we posit that knowledge sharing among employees is a function of their intention and attitude, but also of their subjective norm and perceived behavioral control. A self-compiled survey was used to collect data from 155 employees in three healthcare organizations. The results of our structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis indeed support the notion that knowledge sharing behavior among employees is conducive to innovative behavior, and that attitude and perceived behavioral control are antecedents of knowledge sharing. These findings contribute to the understanding of how behavioral factors operate in OM contexts, highlighting the relevance of a micro-foundation of continuous improvement, and also suggesting some preliminary guidelines that operations managers in healthcare can apply to promote employee knowledge sharing.