Motivational patterns of management team members in a large hospital

Management teams have been introduced as a means of solving conflicts and providing highly required co‐ordination between professional groups, sub‐units and their individual leaders in large, complex organizations such as hospitals. This study examines the motivational patterns of the three members of management teams of four clinical departments at a large university hospital. A strong professionalism was the dominant motivational orientation of all nurse managers (nursing directors of the clinics) and to a great extent also of the physician managers (head physicians of the clinics). The business managers' dominant motivational pattern was hierarchy in two out of the four teams, and professionalism in two teams. The respective comparison groups had rather similar motivational patterns in common with their leaders: ordinary physicians and nurses had a professional and administrative staff hierarchic orientation. The comparison group of mid‐level managers from private firms was also hierarchically oriented, although task orientation was also often high in their motivational pattern. The results are consistent with the educational background and differences in the tasks of the groups studied. The role of different professional cultures in determining and designing efficiently functioning management teams is an important task for further research.