Adoption of a managerial innovation: a study of physician impact analysis

This article examines the adoption of physician impact analysis (PIA) among active treatment hospitals in Ontario, Canada. The influence of variables from three different levels of analysis (individual, organizational and contextual) were included as well as measures of key stakeholders' (Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Medical Chief of Staff) assessments of the attributes of the innovation. A number of conclusions were drawn. First, by adding information about the perceived attributes of the innovation the model was able to account for a larger percentage of explained variance than has been seen in related work. Secondly, the adoption of PIA within a context of written guidelines agreed to by senior management, specifying process and structure concerns, is most likely in organizations which are large and where the CEO positively evaluates the innovation.