Mapping integrative managers profiles in healthcare organizations

Many studies have examined the role of managers in healthcare organizations. However, very few have drawn explicitly on the concept of integration, which can be usefully deployed, to describe a certain type of management profile. The purpose of the article is to suggest a way of characterising the approaches of managers in healthcare organizations to integration. We carried out an exploratory study and used cognitive mapping techniques to analyse semi-structured interviews conducted with a panel of managers holding different positions (hospital directors, nurse managers, physicians). Building on a literature overview and Mary Parker Follett's pioneer approach to leadership, we assume that integrative managers' profile can be evaluated in two dimensions. A positioning of managers can be made on the basis either of their ability to link their levels of responsibility with the other levels of their organizations and environment (the eye level of managers) or of their ability to adopt a systemic view of their organization, seeing as this the need for cooperation (the tendency to cooperate of managers). The article suggests a way to operationalize these two dimensions through a mapping of the integrative ability of managers. The mapping has been applied in two healthcare organizations, especially on physicians, directors and health managers. An analysis of this mapping lead us to consider different forms of health organizations depending on how managers are positioned on the map and depending on how they demonstrate an ability for integration.