Improving department quality performance with interdepartmental integration

In balancing the differentiation and integration of subunits within complex systems, organizations often face challenges in deciding the appropriate level of interdepartmental mechanisms. The present paper seeks to explain some apparent paradoxes in current literature relating to the effects of integration on departmental performance, specifically quality. Collecting quantitative data on thirty-one departments at a medium-sized community hospital in Israel, this study explores the interaction of the integrative facets (i.e. centralization, formal coordination, informal cooperation) and departmental characteristics (i.e. external perspective, collectivism, environmental predictability) in improving departmental quality. Through the use of Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM), researchers identified the department characteristics that most significantly affected these integrative facets. Results provide a framework for maximizing departmental quality through the manipulation of formal coordination in accordance with the degree of intra-department environmental predictability.