Government regulation and organizational effectiveness in the health-care supply chain

Abstract

In the context of the debate on ensuring health-care efficiency, this study aims to identify and prioritize factors and subfactors that influence organizational effectiveness (OE) in the health-care supply chain. For the purpose of this qualitative study, triangulation was applied to identify, explore and systematically analyze the OE-related practices used by diverse stakeholders along the health-care supply chain. Sixty-two OE practices were thus identified. Subsequently, these were grouped in six different nodes before the analytical hierarchical process (AHP) was used to identify the weightings of specific practices (and related factors) and their impact on OE. The findings suggest that external factors associated with government regulation, including government directives and branding, are the most critical factors that influence OE-related practices, while cost-related factors are the least important. The originality of this study derives from the introduction of system theory supported by a modified supplier-input-process-output-customer (SIPOC) framework. Two important factors – government regulation and branding – have been introduced to the existing SIPOC chart as a valuable process structure for the health-care chain.

Keywords: Government regulation, Health-care supply chain, Organizational effectiveness, SIPOC