Author Abstract
Front-line staff possess an immense amount of functional and experiential knowledge from which their organizations can learn. This paper examines two distinct processes for leveraging front-line staff knowledge in organizational learning—participation and collaboration. Participation describes front-line staff sharing decision-making authority with hierarchical superiors (e.g., managers). Collaboration refers to front-line staff respectfully working together by sharing information and coordinating activities to achieve a goal. Using a sample of hospital intensive care units, we found beneficial effects of front-line staff participation and collaboration on organizational performance, as measured by improvement in risk-adjusted unit mortality. However, the positive effects had contingencies. Participation's effect was contingent on the type of participation. Participation in daily unit management had no effect on unit mortality, while participation in process improvement was positively related to improvement in unit mortality. The positive relationship between collaboration and improvement in mortality was greater for units with larger staff sizes. The implications of these findings for organizational learning, process improvement and human resource management are discussed.
Paper Information
- Full Working Paper Text
- Working Paper Publication Date: July 2007
- HBS Working Paper Number: 08-002
- Faculty Unit(s): Technology and Operations Management