Corporate identity dimensions in Latvian health care enterprises: results of expert survey
Corporate identity dimensions in Latvian health care enterprises: results of expert survey

Summary/Abstract: There have been quite many discussions and debate in public media over general health care financing models and the State financing distribution principles, but quite little analysis of general management of health care enterprises that offer paid health care services (either in addition to State subsidized or solely) and, thus, compete within the health care services market. Therefore, there is a need to define a managerial perspective that could contribute to analysis of the health care sector, and explore it on the individual health care enterprise level. The novelty and main contribution of this paper is that it has examined applicability of corporate identity model by Melewar and Jenkins (2002) for analysis of corporate identity formation and management within the State-owned, municipality, and private health care enterprises using expert interview method and survey of 7 top managers from the leading Latvian health care enterprises. Expert interviews reflected partial applicability of corporate identity dimensions outlined by Melewar and Jenkins (2002) in their corporate identity framework to health care enterprises, and highlighted essence of specific individual factors that contribute to formation of general corporate identity dimensions. Results suggest that general managers agree on corporate culture and behaviour dimensions being those that contribute mostly to formation of hospital and health care enterprise corporate identity due to the fact that the core philosophy, mission and goal of health care enterprises are the individual dimension factors related to the raison d'être – the ultimate reason of hospital existence, and the employee behaviour is the main factor from general behaviour dimension through which people perceive and interact with the hospital corporate identity. Further research is intended to test findings from the expert survey among health care customers.

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