Strategic management of HR in health care is important in delivering high-quality patient care. Given that salary and wages constitute about 65 to 80% of the total operating budget in a typical health care organization and also the fact that people play a critical role in delivering high quality patient care, it is imperative for health care organizations to manage their human resources more effectively. Unfortunately, the HR function remains one of the most neglected in health care organizations and 'warm body syndrome' seems to characterize the role of HRM in health care organizations. The purpose of the special issue of AHCM on Human Resource Management is to explore the strategic role that HR function can play in delivering high quality and affordable health care.

Hardbound. Dramatic social, political, technological, and economic changes are occurring in the health care industry. The Advances in Health Care Management research series was developed in response to this ongoing turbulence in the health care industry coupled with the decreasing number of scholarly outlets for complex and originative health care management research. The field needs new perspectives on organization, innovative management theory and superior empirical research that offer exciting ways to approach existing and emerging problems in health care management. Management scholarship should benefit from diverse conceptual and empirical health care research that examines all levels of analysis. The series provides a forum for the highest quality research, whether theoretical or empirical, in the field of health care management. It is endorsed and supported by the Health Care Management Division of the Academy of Management.

The papers included in this volume may be categorized loosely into four general thematic sections: theoretical perspectives on the field of health care management; the role and impact of managed care; evolution of the health professions; enhancing health care organizational performance. The three papers in the first general section deal with a range of theoretical issues related to health care management, from complexity science to a theoretical comparison of integrated networks against systems, to how health care management researchers think about the research process. The three papers in the second section address the significant challenges faced by health care managers as they attempt to respond to the increasing impact of managed care. The third section's three papers look at the evolving roles of the health professions, including those of physicians as clinicians and as executives. The four papers in the final section focus on various approaches, from total quality management to use of work groups and transformational leadership, to enhancing health care organizational performance.

Dramatic changes to the structure of health systems since the 1980s has seen the development of large, integrated health organizations designed to provide scale and scope advantages, improve the quality of care and health outcomes, and provide greater bargaining power relative to payers and large employers. This transition has led to greater interest in understanding hospitals and health systems as complex systems. Two important themes emerged from this effort: 1. Creation and organization of physician-health organizations, and alignment of these organizations with hospital or system structure; and 2. Viewing health care organizations as complex systems, leading to new perspectives on design and management of these organizations. In Volume 15, Reuben McDaniel and L. Robert Burns, authors of two influential articles on these themes from earlier volumes of AHCM, revisit the evolution of health systems organization in light of regulatory and organizational evolution in health care, including the Patient Protection and Accountable Care Act of 2010, and increasing consolidation of health systems. Five additional refereed papers assess the latest evidence on physician integration, complexity, and system redesign.

Health care organizations around the world are judged in terms of a health care triple bottom line: ensuring employee and patient safety, maximizing employee and patient satisfaction, and meeting financial goals. Given the increasing burden of chronic diseases, the increasing complexity of medical interventions, and the increasing costs of care, innovative leadership is required to achieve this triple bottom line. The 14th volume of the Advances in Health Care Management research series addresses the links between leadership and safety, satisfaction or financial performance in health care management by exploring questions such as the following: (1) How does leadership impact employee safety? (2) How does leadership affect patient safety? (3) How does leadership impact employee satisfaction? (4) How does leadership affect patient satisfaction? (5) How does leadership affect financial performance? (6) How do health care organizations deploy multi-level leadership to achieve safety goals? Satisfaction goals? Financial goals? Multiple goals? (7) How do health care organization leaders establish and maintain a safety culture? A patient-centered culture? A high performance culture? Combined cultures?"

System wide health reform has become the norm across the globe, forcing health care delivery organizations to critically examine the ways in which they are structured and operate on a day to day basis. Resource scarcity has become common while at the same time, quality and clinical outcomes become the basis upon which these organizations are measured and compared with one another. This volume of "Advances in Health Care Management" includes contributions from key academic thought leaders from around the world who critically examine how health reform impacts the macro, meso and micro level strategy and policy decisions of healthcare organizations.

This is the second biennial volume reviewing the state-of-the-art on a wide variety of micro and macro health care management topics in the popular "Advances in Health Care Management" series. It proudly showcases reviews of both empirical and conceptual research in specific areas of health care management, including topics in three basic areas: reviews of empirical and conceptual research on health care industry-specific topics, e.g., role of physicians; reviews of empirical and conceptual research on different types of health care organizations focusing on issues specific to such organizations or their segments of the health care industry, e.g., hospitals, managed care organizations; and, reviews of empirical and conceptual research on health care organizations focusing on topics or variables which cover various sub-disciplines of management, e.g., organizational change or entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. New and established scholars discuss such topics within their expert area of research, as well as emerging themes and divergent views, giving their unique perspective on the directions that will help build theory and improve the practice of health care management.

This volume is a collection of critical ideas relating organization science to both operations and accomplishments in the health care environment. A thematic guide for current leaders and practitioners, as well as health administration, business administration and organization development professors and students alike, this work pulls in a broad cross-section of perspectives on the important linkage of scholarship and practice with a solid global perspective. Covering key themes from culture, change, leadership, teams, IT and a systemic perspective of health care overall, it provides both practical insights and theoretical perspectives that will support immediate improvements and encourage longer term dialogue on how organization science can impact the delivery, structure and operations of health care systems globally. "Advances in Health Care Management" provides a forum for leading research on health care management with previous volumes providing reviews of the field, conference papers and research on selected topics including bioterrorism, international health care management, entrepreneurship, patient safety and nursing and health professional shortages.

This fifth volume of Advances in Health Care Management examines international health care management. It consists of 12 papers, one of which serves as an introduction, with the other papers arranged into three sections. The first section on patients and providers focuses on such issues as how socio-cultural forces affect the health care experience; how hospital providers function differently under various governance structures; how global strategies affect providers and patients; and why and how provider organizations should consider integrating within a health delivery system. The second section on policy and management addresses such dilemmas as whether some health care issues are impossible to solve through traditional policy reforms; how international refugees should receive health care; and whether policy reform lessons from other countries can be adapted and applied to transform another country's health system. The third and final section on performance and management addresses issues such as whether the quality of care can be managed at the hospital level, how human resource management can be benchmarked within and across health care organizations, how health care informatics and telemedicine can improve the continuity of care, and whether different ways of accessing care within health systems can be systemically compared and improved.

Authors from Australia, Chile, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, South Africa, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America contributed to this volume. They explore the delivery and organization of care in health systems from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America, encompassing more than 20countries in their comparisons. The papers included in this volume were only accepted following a rigorous peer review process. Each paper, whether solicited or responding to our open call, went through a double-blind review and revision process. The result is a select collection of outstanding papers.

This volume on patient safety revolves around a central question: How can the increased emphasis on patient safety among healthcare managers be translated into better policy and reduced clinical risk? The twelve contributions in this volume are divided between four sections: theoretical perspectives on managing patient safety; top management perspectives on patient safety; health information technology perspectives on patient safety; and organizational behavior and change perspectives on patient safety. The issue of patient safety provides a fertile niche for management researchers to test existing theories and develop new ones. For example, the goal of reducing medical errors while maximizing patient health requires not only an awareness of the tenets of evidence-based medicine, but also the managerial theories of human relations, organizational culture, organizational development, organizational learning, organizational structure, quality improvement, and systems thinking. Indeed, these and other managerial theories are drawn upon and applied by the various contributors. Taken together, the thirty-five authors of this volume demonstrate that the future of patient safety requires healthcare professionals and managers who can successfully engage in multi-faceted projects that are socially and technically complex.

This proposed volume will provide state-of-the art reviews of health care management, linking concerns about health care workforce management with health care organization management issues. This meso perspective, linking micro and macro organizational processes, should appeal to health care management researchers and doctoral students. Review articles in this volume will orient new and established scholars about current themes within health care management, as well as emerging themes and divergent views. The authors evaluate these future directions and offer their perspective on the direction or directions that would help build theory and improve the practice of health care management. Specifically, the volume will focus both on health care workforce management issues, including allied health professionals, nurses, and physicians, and on health care organization management issues, ranging from organizational governance and strategy to the globalization of health care organizations.

Section one, a special research forum on management issues in nursing, examines the causes of the nursing shortage and its impact on performance, as well as how wage increases, staffing increases, empowerment, and organizational design might address and alleviate some of the root causes for this problem. Section two focuses on how health care costs can be lowered and the quality of care can be improved through better clinical and technological management, exploring population health management, patient-centered care management, and the impact of regulations on medical innovations. Section three addresses how health service organizations can improve their performance, and includes a field study of managers' capabilities and hospital success, a critical review of academic health centers, a theoretical model of post-bankruptcy organization performance, and a secondary data analysis that supports a new organizational typology for managing stakeholders.