democracy and health care teams

As I've already mentioned, I've conducted research in hospice interdisciplinary teams. My early work focused on person-centered communication in supportive and persuasive contexts. Later, I examined team processes, including democratic decision making.

Chapter 8 discusses two views of democracy and participation in organizations. One heralds the value of greater employee participation in decision making. The other notes the dark side of so-called democracy, with employees taking on more responsibilities without any compensation. My work in hospice wasn't concerned with the degree to which democracy was "real," but rather with team members' perceptions of democratic processes.

I found that in practice the hospice teams were less democratic than they're typically portrayed in the hospice and health care tea literature. I also found that involvement in decision making was the most important component of the democratic process in terms of how team members evaluated several team and individual outcomes: productiveness and cohesiveness, overall team communication, satisfaction with the team, and desire to stay with the team. In addition, team productiveness was a mediation variable between involvement with the team and job satisfaction.

For me, the most important outcome of this research was that it highlighted the need to train hospice team members in how to work together. Often organization members are thrown into situations and expected to work as a team. But without the training, people simply don't know what to do. While hospice interdisciplinary teams generally serve as exemplars for effective health care teams, members could still benefit from explicit training in teamwork.

If you're interested in reading the article, the citation is:
Coopman, S. (2001). Democracy, performance and outcomes in interdisciplinary health care teams. Journal of Business Communication, 38, 261-284.

~ Professor Cyborg