Evaluating Climate between Working Excellence and Organizational Innovation: What Comes First?

This research introduces a new concept of organizational climate, seen as a "mediator", namely a factor liable to produce positive effects on both individual performances and on work processes and relations, thereby creating a favorable relationship between work excellence and organizational innovation. Health systems have been called to promote sustainability, as actors who work for the health and well-being of their patients. Starting from these considerations, this work shows the main results of a longitudinal study conducted in the pediatric department of a large hospital in southern Italy, for a period of three years (May 2014–May 2017). The reference survey was very broad because in the first step of the research a general questionnaire was adopted which included various aspects. Subsequently, the analysis of the influence of the “climate” factor was carried out according to a 3-dimensional scheme: structural, interpersonal/relational and individual. The focus was therefore set—especially in the second survey—on those indicators responding to the objective of the research and that were consistent with the epistemological choice made. The main scope was to verify the conditions according to which the organizational climate can emerge as a novel factor capable of siding with and orienting innovative patient-centered policies of human resources management.