Elizabeth Ruiz
BU301
September 8th 2014
Hospitals Are Driving Toward A Leaner Organization
1. The perspective of organizational effectiveness that best describes the application of lean management practices would have to be open system perspective. This perspective works the best with effectiveness because an open system is flexible and can adapt in the same way the lean management does. Lean management wants to reduce the waste from work and make jobs work more efficiently. Open Systems are flexible enough to engage in the lean management because that is taking an external element and introducing it to a new way of management that is way more efficient, which is ultimately what everyone wants. Meaning that nobody wants to do extra unnecessary things if there is a more efficient and effective way to do them. The example of this in the case study would be the wait time in hospitals. These hospitals realized that the waiting times were too long, in some cases three hours, they used lean management to reduce waste. In this case the waste was time. The less time the patients spend in the waiting rooms the happier they are. They reduced this waste by nearly half the time. They did this by figuring out what was taking the most time and addressing these areas to better suit the environment. This example shows how they used the open system along with lean management to make less waste by using the environment around them. Less time spent doing something the better.

2. Lean management does ignore some of the perspective of organizational effectiveness. Lean management is great at creating less waste, whatever the waste may be. Some of these waste are only at the benefit of the business itself and not those who put money into their businesses. An example of this would be the hospitals saving money on not buying as many tools for knee and hip surgeries. Although this would save the hospitals money it does not save the patient money. Regardless they would still be paying the same amount as they would if the hospital had many tools for these surgeries. Another example is that although the hospitals are eliminating the wait time by almost fifty percent, the employees are expected to pick up more of a workload by being trying efficient. This could make the employees more stressed with their jobs and make them unhappy and although the business is being more efficient and effective it’s at the expense of the employees, in this case people who are taking care of others. Lastly this could be less effective to the older generation who are used to the hospitals and waiting in lines. They are used to the way hospitals are operated and how they have run, making things faster could make them feel as they are not being taken care of properly. Lean management is a