Health care industry, customer orientation and organizational innovation A survey of Chinese hospital professionals

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the strategy of market orientation and organizational innovation. Design/methodology/approach - This research adopted a cross-sectional study using questionnaires to gather research data. Research subjects were presidents and high-level managers at 491 hospitals, at the level of district hospital or above, in Taiwan. Questionnaires were distributed and 104 valid questionnaires were retrieved, resulting in a response rate of 21.18 per cent. Findings - The results demonstrated that the strategy of market orientation is positively correlated with organizational innovation; the strategies of customer orientation, competitor orientation, and inter-functional coordination have a positive correlation with technical innovation. Practical implications - The results of this study provide hospital administrators with a practical method for developing a useful management strategy in order to improve service quality for customers. Originality/value - The majority of studies on market orientation and innovation have focused primarily on business organizations, particularly western businesses, and not on non-profit organizations and Chinese businesses. However, the goal of non-profit organizations when restructuring or improving their management processes is not the pursuit of profit; rather, they engage in these innovative activities in order to boost organizational performance. This study selected Taiwanese hospitals as the research target for the study of non-profit organizations, and offers an in-depth discussion.