Knowledge sources affecting decision-making among social and health care managers

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how managers in social and health care evaluate the knowledge sources affecting their decision-making, and how the evaluations were associated with the managers' professional background, activity sector, gender, age and management experience.

The study data are gathered from a questionnaire survey to the middle-line doctor, nurse and social managers (n = 404) within the responsibility area of a Finnish university hospital. Assessed the proportions of individual knowledge sources in the complete data set and their associations with the subjects' background data. In addition, grouping of individual knowledge sources variables are made using factor analysis.

The findings indicate that social and health care managers attempt to utilize diverse knowledge sources. Overall, professional experience and education, organization budget, and action plans of one's own unit are estimated as knowledge sources with the greatest impact. Manager's professional background and activity sector are associated with the kind of knowledge affecting their decision-making. Some differences are noted between genders, but differences with respect to age or management experience are non-significant.

Social and health care organizations represent expert organizations where decision-making is steered by professions and management tasks.

This paper suggests that the future decision-makers will be required to identify versatile knowledge areas across cultural barriers, and to be capable of making comprehensive decisions affecting the entire organization.