A‌‍‍‍‌‍‍‌‌‍‍‍‌‍‍‍‍‌‍‍ssignment 2 (small group/individual) Surpassing Bureaucracy

A‌‍‍‍‌‍‍‌‌‍‍‍‌‍‍‍‍‌‍‍ssignment 2 (small group/individual) Surpassing Bureaucracy: Learning to be a caring organization Buurtzorg is a novel health care delivery organization based in the Netherlands. In 14 years, it has grown from a handful of employees to more than 10000 active partner members. Its main purpose is to provide neighborhood-based nursing services using self-managing teams composed of 8 to 10 nurses. In order to implement its innovative organizational structure, the approach taken had to depart from the classical approach based on massification to improve productivity and efficiency and use a more humane and caring paradigm, where the patient had to be at the center of the process. Each team has autonomy and do not depend of central decisions to plan their work; therefore, it is a distributed organization, but through technology all teams stay connected and collaborative. Buurtzorg has been a very successful organization that do not follow the traditional top-down structures that most health-care organizations use, making it a very interesting study case. As you read about this organization you will also learn that Buurtzorg: • It is expanding outside the Netherlands, to countries such as UK, USA and China. • It has the highest patient satisfaction in the country. • Despite the fact that it has higher educated nurses than the competition, their costs are far lower. • Its patients use less medicines and feel better cared for. • It ranked at the very top of the ‘Best Employer’ list in the Netherlands for five years in a row. • Without intending it, the organization has been profitable, making it easier to fund growth, to experiment and to develop the organization further. Please read the references listed at the end and follow the two parts of this assignment: Pa‌‍‍‍‌‍‍‌‌‍‍‍‌‍‍‍‍‌‍‍rt 1: Small Group Discussion (November 9th). During the second hour of the class, the participants will be divided into small groups in order to discuss the case during 40 min. After that, the instructor will lead a general discussion with all the participants together, to hear the results of each small group work. You have to come having read the references and prepared to participate in the discussion. Part 2: Case Analysis (Due November 15th). Based on the readings, the results of the small group class discussion, and any other research, consider the following topics about Buurtzorg organizational design to write your case analysis (this is not a questionnaire, try to be creative in your writing): • Describe the organizational structure of Buurtzorg as good as possible (use figures to illustrate). What are the arguments in favor of it and those opposing? What is your personal feeling about this structure? Would you feel comfortable within it? • Define what is a self-management team, how it develops in organizations and what are its drawbacks. Why was this approach taken by Buurtzorg? • Find out the steps taken by Buurtzorg to grow from one self-managing team to 800 in 9 years (see graph). • Can you consider Buurtzorg a caring, compassionate or humane organization? Why is it different? • How dependent of technology is the structure? Why is it important? • Do you think that this type of structure can function in the Caribbean? References: Nandram, Sharda (2015). Organizational Innovation by Integrating Simplification: Learning from Buurtzorg Nederland. Springer. Chapters 2 and 5. Laloux, F. (2014). Reinventing Organizations: A guide to creating organizations inspired by the next stage of human consciousness. Brussels (Belgium): Nelson Parker. The assignment‌‍‍‍‌‍‍‌‌‍‍‍‌‍‍‍‍‌‍‍ has a maximum of 3000 words.