Response behavior in strategic healthcare alliances. A quantitative study about response behavior of alliance managers in the healthcare sector

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Issue Date
2019-07-11
Language
en
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Abstract
The past three decades have produced a record number of strategic alliances in the healthcare sector, yet the alliance failure rate is significant. While many aspects of strategic healthcare alliances have received attention by practitioners and researchers, still little is known about alliance partners’ response behavior. Disappointed by this absence of robust findings of response behavior in the healthcare context, this study seeks to understand how healthcare alliance managers respond to adverse situations. Specifically this study focusses on the unique relationship between hospitals and health insurance companies. The researcher assessed whether antecedents influence response strategies along the two dimensions of activeness-passiveness and constructive-destructiveness. Using a vignette-experiment accompanied by interviews provides empirical support for internal and external alliance antecedents and individual antecedents. The results indicate that environmental turbulence, competitive pressure, social satisfaction and educational background affect response strategy preferences. The study offers three main implications to foster theory development and healthcare managers’ ability to manage their strategic alliances effectively. First, findings extend previous research suggesting that environmental turbulence and competitive pressure in healthcare are likely to influence active-constructive response strategies. Second, findings validate previous research indicating that social dissatisfaction of the healthcare alliance manager is assumed to influence active-destructive and passive-destructive response strategies. Third, by providing new insights on individual alliance antecedents gender and educational background, this research extends prior work that has predominantly focused on internal and external alliance antecedents. This study thus advances response strategy literature and contributes to a better understanding of healthcare alliance managers’ complex decision-making.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen
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