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Senior executives in healthcare organizations increasingly display preference for a closer handling of operational levels, bypassing middle managers, and de-emphasizing the need to cultivate the next cadre of leaders, creating the potential for leadership and performance gaps. The authors argue that middle managers are a vital resource for healthcare organizations and review the benefits for including them in leadership development and succession planning programs. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Current theories and common practices in addition to data collected from government sources (e.g. BLS), business and industry surveys and reports (e.g. Moody’s, Witt/Kieffer, Deloitte, American Hospital Association) are used to classify the roles, skills, and strategic value of middle managers in healthcare organizations.

The combination of a greater executive span with less hierarchical depth creates a dual effect of devaluing middle management, and a decrease in middle managers’ autonomy. Healthcare middle managers who stay away or lay low further trigger perceptions of low expectations leading to low morale and high levels of stress. Others become hypereffective or develop exit strategies. Major problems are: rising turnover costs; and insufficient attention to succession planning, internal promotion, and leadership development.

The outcomes of this study are useful for management development, particularly at times of change. Practitioners and researchers can have a better understanding of the value of middle managers and their development needs as well as the factors and dynamics that can influence their motivation and affect retention.

Understanding and implementing the ideas developed in this paper by healthcare organizations and other companies can lead to a drastic change in the current perceptions of the importance of middle managers and should lead to long-term retention, well-being, and extrinsic benefits for both the company and its employees.

This paper aims to contribute to the growing body of research on health-care leadership by demonstrating the value of dyads and triads in strengthening capabilities of health-care settings and providing action pathways to accelerate gender parity in senior health-care positions.

The paper reviews the evidence that when single-leadership models are used and women are under-represented in leadership, the health-care industry may miss out on opportunities to increase efficiency and quality of care. Next, the paper describes a co-leadership model with distinct and overlapping roles, which promotes women’s participation and inspires administrative and clinical leaders to collaborate and achieve optimal performance.

The dyad as the enabling track for women in health-care leadership creates opportunities for health-care systems to bridge the gender gap in senior positions as well as improve the delivery of cost-effective quality care.

The inclusive co-leadership model with distinct and overlapping roles is a promising pathway for increasing health-care system efficiency and for promoting women to senior roles by tapping into the leadership skills and expertise that women bring to these roles.

The current paper demonstrates the dual effects of using co-leadership in senior health-care positions and fixing the gender imbalance. It has significant implications for advancing similar pathways in other industries as a means for accelerating gender parity in senior management.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which improving doctor–patient communication (DPC) can address and alleviate many healthcare delivery inefficiencies.

The authors survey causes and costs of miscommunication including perceptual gaps between how physicians believe they perform their communicative duties vs how patients feel and highlight thresholds such as the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) used by hospitals to identify health outcomes and improve DPC.

The authors find that DPC correlates with better and more accurate care as well as with more satisfied patients. The authors utilize an assessment framework, doctor–patient communication assessment (DPCA), empirically measuring the effectiveness of DPC. While patient care is sometimes viewed as purely technical, there is evidence that DPC strongly predicts clinical outcomes as well as patients’ overall ratings of hospitals.

More research is needed to extend our understanding of the impact of the DPC on the overall HCAHPS ratings of hospitals. The authors think that researchers should adopt a qualitative method (e.g. content analysis) for analyzing DPC discourse.

When a sufficient amount of DPCA training is initiated, a norming procedure could be developed and a database may be employed to demonstrate training program’s efficacy, a critical factor in establishing the credibility of the measurement program and nurturing support for its use.

The authors highlight clinical and operational issues as well as costs associated with miscommunication and the need to use metrics such as HCAHPS that allow consumers to see how hospitals differ on specific characteristics.

Prior studies have shown that physician-led hospitals have several advantages over non-physician-led hospitals. This study seeks to test whether these advantages also extend to periods of extreme disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which affect bed availability and hospital utilization.

The authors utilize a bounded Tobit estimation to identify differences in patient satisfaction rates and in-hospital utilization rates of top-rated hospitals in the United States.

Among top-rated US hospitals, those that are physician-led achieve higher patient satisfaction ratings and are more likely to have higher utilization rates.

While the COVID-19 pandemic generated greater demand for inpatient beds, physician-led hospitals improved their hospitals’ capacity utilization as compared with those led by non-physician leaders. A longitudinal study to show the change over the years and whether physician Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) are more likely to improve their hospitals’ ratings than non-physician CEOs is highly recommended.

Recruiting and retaining physicians to lead hospitals, especially during disruptions, improve hospital’s operating efficiency and enhance patient satisfaction.

The paper reviews prior research on physician leadership and adds further insights into the crisis leadership literature. The authors provide evidence based on quantitative data analysis that during the COVID-19 pandemic, physician-led top-rated US hospitals experienced an improvement in operating efficiency.

Skin tone has been shown to impact the ability of darker-skinned athletes to maximize their earnings to potential earnings ratio. Additionally, studies of fan preference have found strong support for racial implications on team preference and ticket sales. The purpose of this paper is to test these theories empirically by examining the marginal impact of skin tone on top selling jerseys.

This study makes use of an ordered probit regression analysis to examine the impact of NBA players’ skin tone on their jersey sales after controlling for a number of other factors. Jersey sales are measured in rank order and skin tone is captured by measuring the level of pigmentation in player profile photos.

Overall, the study finds a significantly positive relationship between skin tone and jersey sale rankings. This runs contrary to the standard literature results that darker-skinned athletes are likely to earn less and attract fewer endorsements than their lighter-skinned counterparts. More specifically, the marginal impact of skin tone is comparable to the marginal impact of individual player statistics in determining how well a player’s jersey will sell.

If, in fact, fans are more likely to purchase jerseys from darker-skinned NBA players, it stands to reason that the standard business practice found in the literature of rewarding lighter-skinned players with higher salaries and better endorsement deals requires further investigation.

This study provides valuable information about athlete branding and offers insights to advertisers and sponsors seeking to align the strategy of branding athletes for increased jersey sales.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The combination of a greater executive span with less hierarchical depth creates a dual effect of devaluing middle management, and a decrease in middle managers’ autonomy. Healthcare middle managers who stay away or lay low further trigger perceptions of low expectations leading to low morale and high levels of stress. Others become hypereffective or develop exit strategies. Major problems are rising turnover costs; and insufficient attention to succession planning, internal promotion, and leadership development.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.