PhD Candidate Laura Gover once had a job in which she worked with five people who were being downsized.
Says Gover: “Experiencing the impact that organizational change has on people in a firsthand way was very eye opening. I realized I was very interested in change management, or change ‘mismanagement’ but wanted to investigate it as a researcher, not suffer through it as an employee.”
So Gover applied for and was accepted into a fast track PhD program with the Sprott School of Business.
Prof. Linda Duxbury
For her thesis, Gover is researching change management in the healthcare industry. Both of her parents are nurses so this field comes naturally.
She is focusing on a small rural hospital located about an hour outside Ottawa.
Gover says that, in 2009, the hospital built a new state-of-the- art facility and, around that time, asked Dr. Duxbury for help to improve staff satisfaction.
Gover and Duxbury have conducted focus groups, interviews and surveys at the hospital. They have received a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to continue their research.
So far, the researchers have identified some challenging dynamics between different occupational groups at the hospital (i.e. managers, nurses, physicians).
“We have found that organizational change may act as a trigger event for underlying rifts at organizations,” shares Gover. “There may be additional sources of social identity, aside from one’s professional identity, that can affect the social dynamics at an organization – in this case, location of residence (city vs. local community) was a huge factor that appeared to impact how individuals perceived and were impacted by the change. Most senior managers are from the city whereas most staff (nurses, physicians, etc.) are from the nearby rural region, and this appeared to influence how the groups perceived one another.”
Gover hopes that her research will help healthcare organizations deal more effectively with organizational change. She plans on pursuing a career in this field when she graduates.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012 in News
Share: Twitter, Facebook
