University of Twente Student Theses

Login

The new way of working : identifying the competencies that are needed for a successful new way of working at UMC Utrecht

Seelig, C. (2011) The new way of working : identifying the competencies that are needed for a successful new way of working at UMC Utrecht.

[img] PDF
1MB
Abstract:The time that organizational size was inextricably bounded to the quality of healthcare is no more. Since non healthcare activities are inferior to healthcare activities it is important to be as efficient and effective as possible regarding housing and occupancy of workplaces. A housing deficit at the facility department of UMC Utrecht forced Gebouwen, Beheer & Inrichting, Inkoop, and Veilige Werkomgeving to reallocate. Expenditure on housing will be accounted by the specific department. Therefore it was important that more efficient use is made of square meters, wherefore the Zandplaat was developed. This new building facilitates 96 dynamic workplaces for 120 employees and managers, which means that no private offices or workplaces exist. This requires a different attitude of employees and managers, because they need to work following different guidelines. These guidelines are wrapped into a concept called the New Way of Working (NWoW). Baane, Houtkamp, and Knotter (2010) examined the core aspects of NWoW. They have found four dimensions that characterize NWoW when applied collectively and to a full extent. These dimensions are: Time and place independent working, Managing results, Access and connectivity to knowledge, and Flexible employment relationships. The extent to which these dimensions are collectively present within UMC Utrecht is called the intensity of NWoW. Theory showed that not all employees and managers have the same willingness to change, which makes it more difficult to manage them in this change process. For this reason the competencies needed by employees and managers to be successful in NWoW are investigated. Successful in NWoW means meeting the performance goals of NWoW. These performance goals are commitment, work-life balance, and overall productivity. The literature review resulted in a bundle of competencies distinguished in employee competencies and managerial competencies that should influence the relation between the intensity of NWoW and the performance goals. According to the literature, employees need empowerment, knowledge sharing among employees, and employees’ acceptance of IT to be successful in NWoW. Managers on the other hand need individualized consideration, trust, empowerment impact, supporting employees’ acceptance of IT, supporting knowledge sharing among employees, and output control. Intensity of NWoW, employee and managerial competencies, and performance goals of NWoW together form the foundation for the questionnaire that is developed. This questionnaire, operating like a scan, is meant to give an overview of the extent of NWoW present within an organization. Employee and managerial competencies together with the performance goals of NWoW are used to discover to what extent employees and managers already possess certain competencies and to what extent performance goals of NWoW are already met. Subsequently validity and reliability tests were used to determine whether the questions (items) that together form a scale (construct) prove reliable and whether they measure what they intend to measure. Unfortunately due to a low unit of analysis (N) it is not possible to draw statistical conclusions for the managerial competencies. The employee competencies do pass the test. However, when testing the regression equations it becomes clear that employees’ acceptance of IT is not significant. Therefore two competencies remain: empowerment and knowledge sharing among employees. The initial research model partly remains, because from all theoretical employee and managerial competencies it can be stated that empowerment and knowledge sharing do positively contribute to the performance goals of NWoW. The results from UMC Utrecht show high values, respectively a mean value of 4.09 (scale 1 – 5) for empowerment and 3.83 for knowledge sharing among employees. The results of the questionnaire on intensity of NWoW show a moderate extent of NWoW present in the organization. Despite the implementation it is observed that time and place independent working and access and connectivity to knowledge score notable lower that the other two. This is mainly caused by: the absence of working at home, the low use of social media, and the limited amount of IT used to facilitate NWoW. III Although it is hard to prove that the other competencies do contribute to the performance goals of NWoW the data still allow analysis and thereby recommendations for improvements for UMC Utrecht1. Additionally, this developed questionnaire should not be altered after one test, but should be repeated to obtain sufficient values for employee and managerial competencies. After all, theory does indicate that these competencies contribute to the performance goals of NWoW. For this reason it is important that UMC Utrecht pays attention to these competencies and help employees to develop them. For all these developments it is important that managers proactively support employees. More specific, UMC Utrecht can improve the success of NWoW by allowing working at home, and stimulating the use of social media and IT means. Furthermore, creating competency profiles – used to determine the cognitive capacities of potential employees and managers - that contain the employee and managerial competencies of this research ensures that new employees and managers will meet the NWoW demands regarding competencies.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Clients:
UMC Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:Business Administration MSc (60644)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/62811
Export this item as:BibTeX
EndNote
HTML Citation
Reference Manager

 

Repository Staff Only: item control page