Sociological Theory of Professions in Health Care Organisations in Terms of Organisational Learning

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Characteristics of a learning organization
Professions about organizational learning
Theory on Professions
The Concept of Organisational Learning
Theory on Profession with Regard to Organisational Learning
Conclusion
References

Introduction

The main task of this paper is to apply the sociological theory of professions to examine the extent to which health care organizations have the characteristics required to support organizational learning. In this respect, it is necessary to analyze the theory on professions and examine the necessity of organizational learning for the health care staff. I am going to compare the professions and occupations, compare adaptive and generative learning, and include different values that can be beneficial while implementing organizational learning.

People working in the area of health care should be able to make decisions influencing the lives of their patients who are ordinary people; improving the care delivery, it is possible to facilitate relationships between health care staff, patients, and other stakeholders in the complicated problems relevant to human health. Some professions are more likely to encounter difficulties related to little knowledge. Occupations in this respect are treated as human activities that help to gain money and do not require formal education. Degrees and certifications are irrelevant for cleaner and front-door security men.

Health care provision in modern society has been complicated by the emergence of new health needs and an increase in the number of people requiring health services. In addition, there has been a call for an increase in quality and reduction of health services. Besides, technological advancement and the introduction of new health care procedures have been a challenge to health providers. The new challenges call for creativity and flexibility in service provision. Professionalism and organization learning are some of the concepts that are used to overcome modern challenges. The paper examines the usage of concepts of professionalism and organization learning in health organizations.

Characteristics of a learning organization

Although the learning characteristics are exhaustive we are going to examine four of the common which were laid down by Argyris (1991, p. 101): communication and openness; inquiry and feedback; adequate time; and mutual respect and support. A learning organization must adopt a culture of dialogue, communication moves vertically across the organization. There ought to be a high participatory level of all individuals in the organization. An organization that has adopted this culture has a robust flow of communication from the bottom of the hierarchy to the top and vice versa. Inquiry encourages people to adopt an inquisitive culture in course of their duty, this helps them analyze the problem critically and also get insights from others in the organization.

Feedback involves the responses generated from the inquiries made. The learning organization should allocate ample time for the individual to continue the professionalism. This may include the organization organizing in-house training for the health care practitioners (Freidson, 2007, p. 350). This ensures that public care produces the most qualified health personnel. This reduces the overreliance on the private sector and also reduces the exploitation of the patient. The last one is mutual respect and support. This involves appreciating co-workers and all other subordinates who make the discharge of duty successful. It also calls for the senior staff to show respect to the junior officers and vice versa.

Professions about organizational learning

There has been frantic effort to realize the importance of teamwork with some sections opposing and others proposing it. This is evidenced by Bolton et al. (2005) suggesting that teamwork is a subject approached by practitioners and researchers. The critique is characterized by two fundamental inter-related arguments. The first one focuses on the normative dimension and pluralistic nature. Another one defines teamwork to be examined on conflict and differences and struggles between the competing sets of interest occasioned within the group or organization.

Within the operating theatre context, teamwork is a discursive means through which professional members negotiate the contradicting between integration and specialization. Teamwork is viewed as a divisive factor as it engages people from different professions (Freidson, 1988, p. 206). This creates conflicts as each of them contributes different opinions towards the best approach. This can constitute a poor organizational culture where there is a breakdown of communication. Improved health care has been on the forefront after recent studies showed that some death has occurred as a result of negligence and if care has been given such deaths would have been avoided.

The health care commission which reviewed complaints against trust said that of its 2007-2008, the result showed that some trusts were not responding to complaints effectively or learning lessons. The review also noted that the total number of complaints half of which were referred back to the trust for further work did not meet the initial response. The NHS which focused on England recommended improvement on how to deal with Medicare issues.

According to the data collected, it shows that one in every five complaints was about treatment or wrong diagnosis. This has gone on record in claiming a life of a patient who was wrongly fed with an epidural drug in the case cited. “A new mother was unlawfully killed when an epidural drug was mistakenly fed into her arm via an intravenous drip” (Evans, 2008) this could have been avoided if utmost care was observed. The other complaints involved delayed or wrong diagnosis, access of treatment, staff attitudes, communication, and information, substantial of patient or family member were not happy with the treatment administered and another number alleged that there was a wrong or delayed diagnosis. The overall results and recommendation tabled by the NHS commission show that the UK health care has a great task to undertake if they are to achieve the milestone in providing for better health care and improved customer care.

Although some categories of people criticize teamwork, it should be embraced to curb immature death some of which are as a result of lack of communication or interaction (Dussault, 2008, p. 209). Teamwork can serve ideological purposes in which language practices can play a central role in the mobilization, legitimization, and reproduction of interest in social structures. Teamwork can particularly serve in persuasive and rhetorical functions through which the desired cooperative spirit of teamwork can be achieved. There are also suggestions by Mueller (1994) that managerial control through teamwork is a contested process but it offers a degree of success.

The injection of professionalism in organizational learning leads to the establishment of group norms of conduct that govern the medical officers from engaging in malpractices. This is especially important in health care as it helps to bar the services of an unqualified medical practitioner, who is engaged with substandard medication. There has been an effort by the UK government to improve medical care; this includes making reforms on the health facilities. However the biggest task remains on the health care organization, this organization must change from the culture of individualism and adopt an encompassing culture of collectiveness.

Integration of all departments within an organization is a great stride as there is a great mapping of health problems from a different medical practitioner (Argyris, 2001). This leads to the practitioner adopting the best method of tackling the problem, which generally gives out the desired results. High regard should be given to health care has become one of the major contributors to the national economy. It is believed to be generating an average of 9% of the GDP. This is a significant amount and proves how much attention health care demands if the UK government has to continue enjoying the double digits economic growth.

Health care has adopted knowledge management in its effort to improve health care. In health care, the discourse of knowledge management is bounded by a range of interrelated terms often used interchangeably. Building knowledge management can help attain the organization’s goal as all their data are kept in one database. The management of past and present knowledge is an important aspect of organizational learning. How the data is managed in a Health care organization is determined by definition, built it generally cover all the instruction-based bit of organization.

Thereby, the profession of a medical staff member should be a method to provide the clients with required services at a high level considering the ethical and professional standards. In this respect, organizational learning should be implemented into health care requiring the medical staff members to acquire new knowledge and skills relevant for modernized mechanisms and devices that are aimed at improving the delivery of health care.

Theory on Professions

Occupations and professions

Some occupations are called professions because of certain characteristics differentiating them from ordinary occupations. Historically, different occupations were called professions, and the knowledge for these occupations was acquired in the medieval universities including the study of law, medicine, university teaching, and other activities that were independent of the category of customers; these occupations are called ‘professions’ because of their self-supporting nature which presupposes self-employment (Friedson, 2001). Professions should be defined as well as professions to make the difference obvious and emphasize the necessity of organizational learning relevant to the improvement of professional skills and knowledge. Glenn (2003) presents a good explanation of profession with the help of six elements of a profession defined by Allan Millet:

…a full-time and stable job, serving continuing societal needs;…is regarded as a lifelong calling by the practitioners, who identify themselves personally with their job subculture;…is organized to control performance standards and recruitment;…requires formal, theoretical education;…has a service orientation in which loyalty to standards of competence and loyalty to clients’ needs are paramount;…is granted a great deal of collective autonomy by the society it serves, presumably because the practitioners have proven their high ethical standards and trustworthiness” (pp. 26-27)

Differences between the concepts

Thus, self-regulation is one of the basic differences which is observed between the concept of occupation and the one of a profession. The representatives of the professions can demonstrate self-regulation, their labor is not bound to the need of gaining money, it hence is directed on developing knowledge and experience (in this case the patients appear as the means to explore the peculiarities of the human organism). The issue of gender facilitates the differentiation between the occupations and professions as traditionally the professions were the matter of males only. The hierarchy of the health care organisations is established in accordance with gender diversity including males on the top and females at the bottom of the job ladder.

The Concept of Organisational Learning

Organisational learning is deemed as the collective learning of the individuals in the organization. This knowledge is transferred overage and it encompasses the organizational culture. The NHS recently has emphasized the codification of individual and collective knowledge. In organizational learning, there are different kinds of learning. Learning about things involves the knowledge, communication, and analysis of the situation. Tactic knowledge arises from the skills of people, especially experienced people. Cultural knowledge is relevant to the customs, values, and relationships with clients and other stakeholders. Organisational learning is a method to implement innovations into the sector of health care. Health care provision is one of the most important responsibilities of any society.

There has been an increased call from the policymakers, medical practitioners, and academicians for the NHS and the private sector to adopt robust organizational learning to improve efficiency in the health care sectors. Learning has been identified as a central concern for a modernized NHS. The system encourages the continuity of individual professionalism in improving learning. Organisational learning is defined as the way the organization builds and organizes knowledge and routines and the professionalism of the workforce to improve organizational performance.

Although medical education emphasizes the importance of lifelong learning by an individual it should be noted that if the knowledge is left at the tactical level, major issues will be overlooked. To gain the overall benefits of learning across the organization, such learning should be deployed and shared with others within the organization (Halliday, 1985, p. 427). Learning is something that is undertaken and developed by an individual. It helps to improve competitiveness and better discharge of duty. However, an organization can foster or inhibit the process. Organisational culture and structures shape the way in which individuals are engaged with the learning process.

There have been different approaches to the management of knowledge. A codification and the personalization approach. The codification is computer-oriented. The knowledge in this case is stored in an electronic database and retrieved when required. The information contained therein is limited to authorized users only. In the personalized approach, the knowledge is embodied by the person who develops it. This form of knowledge can only be communicated to the rest of the organization during forums or during discharge of duty. The recent emphasis in the NHS concerns the codification of knowledge. This is important as it creates a source of reference where practitioners and patients can check for authentication of the products, notably medication. The personalization approach is most popular in cases involving interns or apprenticeship, where the knowledge is induced to the trainees as they get technical training. However, whichever node is adopted depends squarely on some other factors. These factors include a criterion of whether there is the provision of standardized services and products. Where the services and the product are standardized codification approach is adopted. In case the products are tailored to fit the tastes of individuals, the personalized approach is the best.

Creating a database with the information required helps improve the delivery of health care, where they can also call for referrals on past medication and history of diseases (Abbott, 1988, p. 46). Having this bank of information is only part of the challenge. The organization has to devise the best way to use that knowledge. The deployment of organizational knowledge in pursuit of organizational goals is called the learning routines and constitutes the learning organization. Healthy care should therefore identify, understand and improve the learning routines.

The learning routines used by the organization are classified according to whether they are adaptive or generative. Adaptive learning allows the organization to use some pre-defined pathways. The generative method involves developing a mechanism to help the organization achieve its goals. Both modes of learning are important to the organization but the most common routines found in an organization are those of adaptive learning.

Adaptive (single-loop) learning. This mode of learning has adopted the computer approach whereby the system is cybernetic. This means that the system can monitor itself to detect whether it is working towards the desired route. The negative feedback enables the system to loop to correct the error or give an error message. This is referred to as single-loop learning. A good example is a clinical audit in health care (Nutley & Davies, 2001, pp. 37-38).

Generative (double-loop) learning. Adaptive learning is necessitated by the fact that it is guided by the operating norms to result in a self-regulating system. However, this is only possible where the action is predefined and does not change over the learning cycle. If these actions are tampered with the system malfunctions, to counter this problem it has given the rise to a double-looped learning system. A Double-looped learning system leads to a redefinition of the organization’s goals, norms, and procedures. This is referred to as generative learning as it calls into question the very nature of the course plotted and the feedback loops used to maintain that course (Nutley & Davies, 2001, pp. 37-38). Building a learning organization has been deemed as developing an organizational culture (Senge, 1990, p. 259). This is because an incident happening in one department cannot be assumed to have been a lesson to other departments unless there is the integration of such departments into one discrete system.

Thus, single-loop learning is aimed at indicating the errors, gaps, and lack of correspondence. Detecting inappropriate implementation of the wee-organized standards is the issue appealing to the single-loop learning, whereas the reorganization of the health care system which has appeared to contain some gaps and errors in the issue appealed to double-loop learning. Consequently, the main difference is the response to the errors: the single-loop learning indicated those and the double-loop learning focuses on fixing the system in order to follow the commonly-established standards of the health care institutions.

Theory on Profession with Regard to Organisational Learning

Values facilitating organizational learning. Some techniques can improve the results of organizational learning. Celebration of success promotes and encourages the pursuit of excellence. The absence of complacency encourages constant research to find new and better ways of delivering products and services. Tolerance of mistakes advocates minimizing the possibility of occurrence of failures during discharge of duty. However, since this is almost inevitable it is required that any failure be addressed as a lesson to prevent future recurrence. Belief in human potential can be developed through the organization assessing and fostering human effort as they are the main contributors to knowledge skills and innovations. The culture within the organization should try to maintain the labor force for its continuity. Research and development budgets and programs about learning organizations assessing and investing in research as this give them a better position than other organizations. Prioritizing the immeasurable advocate on the judgments based on the qualitative understanding rather than the tyranny of numbers. Openness is revealed through the sharing of knowledge throughout the organization which is crucial in developing learning capacity.

The necessity of organizational learning. There is a great need for organizational learning, especially in the public sector. Like Ferlie et al. (2003) note, “the scale of public sector organization is of sufficient significance to warrant attention from organizational learning and knowledge” though the public has undergone substantial reform there is a need for the organization to develop organizational learning (Halliday, 1985, p.427). Another reason for encouraging organizational learning is because the literature on organizational learning makes references possible. Also, attention to issues affecting learning and knowledge in the public organization may help expand knowledge about the field across all types of organizations.

Conclusion

Due to the sensitivity of health care and its position in society, the organization must adopt more customer-friendly approaches to fully address health issues in the UK. This will contribute towards the firm attaining a positive public image. The major initiative adopted by the public health organization should be backed by the government to ensure they are brought to fruition. Individual learning in improving competency should be encouraged from the individual level and organization level. The individual level involves individuals pursuing more education to improve on their know-how and help them become more competent in discharging their duties in areas of their profession.

The organizational level of education involves the formation of teamwork, where knowledge is disseminated across the organization. This has the significance of involving every member of the organization. The resulting trend of interaction creates a culture of collectiveness (Bolton, 2005, p. 17). Use of the Knowledge management in health care has received much applaud and it has generally improved on both data mining and storage of data in an electronic form. Also, medical practitioners are using the capabilities of those knowledge systems to come up with a sophisticated mode of medication. The government has also documented a health reform in England. It focuses upon developing a first-rate commission to create an NHS where patients have more choice as well as a real voice in the design of their services. This is a result of the outcome of the results that showed that the Health care was contributing to an upward of 9% in the GDP of UK.

Health organizations should also deploy more elaborate measures to deal with the case of professional negligence. Most of these cases should either be dealt with through the establishment of a medical (professional) body to oversee, enact and effect laws governing how medical discipline should be conducted. The other measure may include the government forcing individuals to pay for their negligence where the death of a patient results from negligence. Health care should also embark on developing a powerful system to collect the views of the customers concerning the medication and services they receive. This feedback will help the organization identify the underperforming department and take the correct measure. This also improves customer relationships with the health organization and carries the conviction that they receive the right treatment.

Appreciation of teamwork in an organization supported by knowledge management can help health care achieve great strides in ensuring a healthy nation. Knowledge management can be attained through the creation of a knowledge repository within organizations. This means that individuals involved in delivering healthcare services will be more skilled. On the other hand, organizational learning will also be vital in ensuring the customer gets the best medical care at a better price. The government and the health care organization should embark on funding researches as this is the only way to find innovation.

References

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Bolton, S. & Muzio, G.D., 2007. Can’t live with ‘em; can’t live without ‘em: gendered segmentation in the legal profession. Sociology, 41 (1), pp. 47-64.

Dussault, G., 2008. The health professions and the performance of future health systems in low-income countries: Support or obstacle? Social Science & Medicine, 66, pp. 2088-2095.

Evans, S., 2008. New mother ‘unlawfully killed’ by blunder. The Independent, 5 February.

Freidson, E., 2007, Professional Dominance. 2^nd ed. New York: Transaction Publishers.

Freidson, E., 1988. Professional Powers A Study of the Institutionalization of Formal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Glenn, R. W., 2003. Training the 21^st century police officer: redefining police professionalism for the Los Angeles Police Department. Santa Monica, California: Rand Corporation.

Halliday, T., 1985. Knowledge mandates: collective influence by scientific, normative and syncretic professions. The British Journal of Sociology, 36 (3), pp. 421-447.

Nutley, S. M. & Davies, H. T. O., 2001. Developing organisational learning in the NHS. Medical Education, 35, pp. 35-42.

Senge, P.M., 1990. The fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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