Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Hospital Competitive Strategies And Performance Outcomes, Wei Wu

Doctoral Dissertations

Hospitals are under increasing pressure to improve performance and healthcare outcomes. The existing literature does not point to a clear conclusion on whether competition can help address the performance challenges of hospitals which lead to improvements in clinical outcomes. Prior research on the effects of hospital competitive strategies usually focuses on one strategy or one type of outcome at a time. As such, there is a dearth of systematical studies on different hospital competitive strategies and their consequent performance outcomes.

The main objective of this dissertation is to examine several hospital competitive strategies and quantitatively validate the implications of each …

Strategic Flexibility In Not-For-Profit Acute Care Hospitals, Donna Fe Jamieson

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

STRATEGIC FLEXIBILITY IN NOT-FOR-PROFIT ACUTE CARE HOSPITALS

by

Donna F. M. Jamieson

Despite multiple industry cycles of rapid and complex changes in the last three decades, the body of research in health care services strategy has not addressed the idea of strategic flexibility, that is, when and how should strategy evolve under conditions of environmental turbulence. Strategic flexibility has been defined in the literature as the ability to adapt to rapidly changing conditions by leveraging internal resources and competencies to effectively compete. With increasing scope of responsibility in both nursing and non-nursing functional areas, nurse executives have not only …