Special Edition of the Journal of Business Research

Paper submission deadline is July 4, 2009

Healthcare providers and organizations (including but not limited to hospitals, clinics, health insurance providers, and pharmaceutical manufacturers) make decisions in an extremely dynamic and unpredictable environment and rely upon complex interactions for highly reliable outcomes. If one or more of these organizations, individuals, or interactions is unreliable then errors or omissions often occur that may result in catastrophic consequences: high costs, denial of needed medical treatment, unnecessary infections and injuries, and even death. How then can organizations and individuals achieve highly reliable performance when working in this dynamic and unpredictable environment?

The goal of this special issue of the Journal of Business Research is to provide leading-edge research on applying individual or collective mindfulness concepts in studies of healthcare management that contribute to highly reliable performance outcomes in healthcare organizations.

For the purposes of this special edition, studies relating to individual mindfulness should focus upon factors that Langer (1989) develops: (1) creating new categories, (2) openness to new information, (3) sensitivity to different contexts, (4) awareness of multiple viewpoints, and (5) process orientation. Weick and Sutcliffe (2001) develop the key aspects of organizational mindfulness: (1) preoccupation with failure, (2) reluctance to simplify, (3) attention to operations, (4) focus on resilience, and (5) the migration of decisions to expertise.

 

This special edition of the Journal of Business Research encourages quantitative and qualitative studies on reliability and mindfulness in the management of healthcare from the widest variety of business disciplines.  Theoretical and empirical advances from fields such as (but not limited to) accounting, finance, information systems, marketing, operations management, organizational behavior, and risk and insurance are considered for publication.

Special Editor:             Paul Mangiameli, University of Rhode Island.

Send papers in WORD format to the special issue editors at: mangia@uri.edu

For further information concerning suggested topics, writing style, etc. please go tohttp://www.cba.uri.edu/home/faculty/journalbusres/