Reference no: EM132247597
Community Health Systems (CHS) made a significant organization change in 2013 when it acquired Health Management Associates (HMA) and its 70 hospitals for $7.6 billion (Herman, 2017). The Wankel (2008) reading talks about an organizational change as being one that can change a small aspect of a company or can be a large-scale transformation (p. 3). This CHS change was transformational as it was a system-level strategic change in growth away from relatively safe, 1-2 hospital acquisitions to one giant gulp. Interestingly, this change and its resultant devastation has resulted in an error correction endeavor as CHS has now become a single-loop learning organization (Wankel, 2008). CHS had little choice than to recognize the negative consequence of the original change and quickly develop a counter measure of correction through massive sell off of facilities that continues today.
Wankel (2008) defines a change agent as “one whose intentional actions initiate, facilitate, or otherwise cause the desired change to be accomplished-a movement from one set of thoughts or behaviors to another” (p. 4). The desired change with CHS was to grow, and to grow quickly. The leadership team, and/or CEO Wayne Smith himself, was the change agent as the decision was made to complete the HMA deal. The HMA deal itself acted as the change agency as being the “mechanism or means by which change is accomplished” (Wankel, p. 4). Wankel interestingly suggests an alternative idea about change agency in that a company may react “to the demise of a competitor” and use this as the agency for the change (p. 4). The struggles of HMA prior to the CHS acquisition likely prompted CHS to identify HMA as an opportunity to snatch the wounded hospital system on the cheap and gain the quick growth. I view this as a change “double agency”. Setting aside the eventual outcome of this change, if the goal was indeed to grow quickly, the change agent(s) accomplished that change.
References
Herman, B. (2017). The Collapse of Community Health Systems. Retrieved from https://www.axios.com/the-collapse-of-community-health-systems-1513304786-f5a411e6-e0dd-401b-af65-9dc81be4be80.html
Wankel, C. (Ed.) (2008). Change Agency in 21st-Century Organizational Life. In 21st Century Management : A Reference Handbook (pp. 2-20). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.