South Australia Ambulance Service Organizational Behaviour Case Analysis

Who

Ray Main should develop a system which empowers the culture of organization along with the shift towards automation and excellent customer service.

Has to do what

The leadership of South Australia Ambulance Service is required to do the following:

To set a strategic direction for SAAS this would be compatible to the new strategic plan.

Meet the service expectations of the clients by focusing more on efficient customer services.

Empower the service delivery personnel fully and hold them accountable for every action.

The expectations of donators and community should be aligned.

Make SAAS compatible to respond to mass casualties.

Workforce retention should be increased.

Emergency sector and healthcare should be integrated to respond efficiently to any casualty.

Interventions should be prioritized.

The impact of any change should be evaluated on the patient as patients' life is more important. (Daniels 2009)

The South Australia Ambulance Service (SAAS) should focus on developing a system which supports the leadership of the organization to create self-managed work-teams at the company cost. Traditionally, SAAS was hierarchical organization having no concept of work teams.

Why

The borders of South Australia are shared by all the mainland cities of Australia. South Australia should have a unified ambulance service in order to better cover the casualties. Thus there is a need to develop a system which empowers the leaders of SAAS to take initiatives and plan the work management of the organization more effectively. Ray Main was one of the project coordinators for SAAS. (Bucklin and Dickinson 2001) He attempted to standardize the system all across Australia but he faced certain difficulties in training and coaching of the staff. The coordinators responsibility is to train the leaders of the organization to take initiatives and decisions on the basis of the current situation. He is supposed to implement a system which standardizes the training courses of leaders. SAAS is reluctant to send its leaders to any training institute.

When

The standardized system of leadership training should be implemented in coordination with the implementation team as soon as possible. There is an urgent requirement for SAAS to take a u-turn and change the way they are managing their business. The centralized system of management is in place which is not a going-concern in this rapidly changing and competitive environment.

Analysis

Key Facts in Case

This case presents the need to introduce self-managed team at SAAS. The need for self-managed teams arises because the organization is currently running according to a centralized management system in which managers and leaders have no power to take initiatives and decisions. The key drivers to introduce a standardized system of leadership training is the need for improvement in ambulatory care services through high-tech equipment, the training schedules implementation, enhancing the career of staff through proper training compatible with latest ambulatory care equipment and the empowerment of work teams so that teams have the power to take on-the-spot decisions.

There was a try to change the organizational structure to work teams. The initiative was proved to be worthless because the staff was not prepared for change and the move towards work-teams failed. The reason for failure of this system was the expectations management. Teams at different locations were empowered. After empowerment, the expectations for win increased but due to lesser experience and false expectations, the morale of the empowered work teams drowned. This was the main reason why the initiative of Pickering did not work out. (Bucklin and Jackson 2000)

SAAS is undergoing fundamental transformation of its form and structure and means of self-regulation. At the same time it must continue to play its role of providing pre-hospital emergency care and transport of individual patients. He can not suspend operations to introduce new initiatives and strategies, but must improvise while implementation takes place. At the same time, it must change its structure to one that is compatible with modern standards of organization. This requirement is now required by an organization that is not necessarily suited to accommodate such a change, let alone the rate of change implemented.

Issues and Symptoms (cause and effects)

Misfit employees in the SAAS staff.

Work team concept failed.

There are certain standards in SAAS. The implementation of these standards is not up to the mark or they are not mandatory to follow. This deviation from the standards has led to inconsistencies in operational and the clinical performances of SAAS.

Lack of thrive to become the number ambulance service in Australia.

Seminars on empowerment and team leadership were organized by...

The seminars were a great source of learning but these workshops again proved to be a failure as the skills learned were not properly implemented by the SAAS leaders into their operations.
Increased costs of operations due to unavailability of automated systems.

Due to limited knowledge of leadership, the staff has a little knowledge about the ambulance's role in emergency situations.

Volunteer retention as well as recruitment was also a problem for SAAS. Due to limited systems, people do not see SAAS as career-oriented organizations. (Azaroff and Austin 2000)

External Analysis

Brief industry analysis

Many ambulance routes in South Australia under the roads, with the South Australian Government in the privatization contract, the operation of the direction of the private sector ambulance services. In recent years, the new ambulance service has been installed along the roads of South Australia, and the existing configuration and operation of ambulance services were reviewed. In these road ambulance services, ambulance provides the people involved in traffic accidents the first treatment, to the nearest hospital (if required), and then return to their base on the road. These systems are generally zero-line capacity, and their work, especially the ambulance distribution policy, which states that only certain vehicles can be transported to the road (part of the backup), mainly due to time constraints travel distance or area. In addition, some policies involve a number of scheduling, in some cases (depending on call type), it is necessary to send more than one ambulance to the same call. (Azaroff & Harris 2001)

Average response time is considered the main measure of performance. In general, the response time limit specified in the privatization contracts, must be followed by the private sector, which is for road management. Ambulance service and other performance indicators to balance work load, not by the requirements of the scores of ambulance services (loss probability) services, and telephone scores did not fail at a predetermined threshold (ie, scores and response times call for more services than T. minutes). The first measure is, in particular the use of ambulance services analyst. For example, the United States Ambulance Service Act of 1973 showed that 95% of the emergency medical response should be 10 minutes in rural areas in the city area for 30 minutes. Some of the roads in the South Australia Ambulance Service, the statistical data were also used to evaluate the system, the privatization of these regulations are stipulated in the contract. (Smoot and Duncan, 1997)

Many studies have suggested that rather than the development of emergency response in recent decades in the analysis of the classical model of the system changes. In particular, the hypercube model of the spatial distribution of queuing theory and Markov approximation for these systems based on the analysis of one of the most effective ways. The model involves solving the O (2n) of the linear equations (N is the number of ambulances in the system), which involves the probability of a variable steady-state system. With these probabilities, the performance of a number of measures related to essential systems management, can be estimated. Hypercube model used in the example of American city ambulance services can be found in different studies. Recently, the hypercube has been considered is the deployment model to deal with terrorist attacks and other major emergencies. In South Australia, hypercube model is applied to analysis of urban ambulance service and ambulance service on the highway. (Rummler and Brache 1995)

Some studies have extended the original model of the cube to withdraw the route the ambulance service purposes its strict assumptions. For example, many researchers have modified the model, consider some of the backup, the other to expand the model to study multiple servers send the same and different, and the heuristic model proposed on the basis of Mendonca and Morabito study to estimate large scale systems, the loss probability. Other studies have focused on the hypercube model and optimization program combination. These studies provide a comprehensive study of hypercube ambulance heuristic methods applied to local problems to achieve success. (Peters and Waterman 2002)

Recently, some researchers have integrated into a genetic algorithm to determine the primary and secondary ambulance (cutting issues) the optimum region cube model, given the current position, taking into account the different conflicting objectives, so that the average user response time, workload balance and call the ambulance response time and part exceeds a predetermined threshold. In this study, results showed that the best way of these goals is through a simple change, and without moving, without additional investment in the ambulance and the ability to satisfy the atomic size of the system.

STEP analysis

Social

SAAS is a socially responsible organization investing in disaster prevention and primary care.

Due to increase…