Abstract

Organisational management characteristics occur with varying rates across industries and organisations within industries. While professional organisations tend to have fewer undesirable management characteristics than non-professional organisations, little work has been done to assess whether healthcare, with its unique legal structure that can put hospital administration at odds with physician autonomy, is an exception among professional organisations. In this study, rates of positive as well as undesirable management practices were estimated from publicly available ethnography data and compared to data from non-healthcare professional settings. A structured literature review was conducted to validate the ethnography data and further explore possible mechanisms. The main finding is that healthcare professionals do have greater group conflict with administration than other professionals and that healthcare settings exhibit greater instances of unwritten rules than other professional organisations.most used method for polishing.