How to Make Health Organisations More Agile During the Pandemic? Challenges of Managing Entrepreneurial Behaviour

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has put health systems around the world under the ultimate pressure, unseen in the modern age. The main purpose of this research is to investigate how to make health organisations more adaptable in the pandemic circumstances, more precisely how the internal organisational climate affects entrepreneurial initiative on a daily basis. Entrepreneurial initiative thrives in an organisation with an organisational culture based on values promoted by entrepreneurial management, highlighting the possibility of individual initiative, through appropriate compensation mechanisms, given the organisational context and time constraints. During the pandemic year 2020, we conducted a pilot study as part of more comprehensive research, in which data were collected from primary care health centers in Serbia. The Corporate Entrepreneurship Climate Instrument (CECI) was used in order to estimate and evaluate the internal environment and overall propensity toward entrepreneurship. The instrument encompasses five relevant determinants that influence employees’ entrepreneurial activities: management support, work discretion, time availability, rewards/reinforcement, and organisational boundaries. The value of the research is reflected in the creation of empirically and theoretically substantiated evidence about the relevance of these factors for creating a favourable internal organization climate, thus allowing a more flexible and creative health service.