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The effect of human resource management on performance in hospitals in Sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic literature review

Overview of attention for article published in Human Resources for Health, August 2018
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  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (88th percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (71st percentile)

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1 blog
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44 Dimensions

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421 Mendeley
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Title
The effect of human resource management on performance in hospitals in Sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic literature review
Published in
Human Resources for Health, August 2018
DOI 10.1186/s12960-018-0298-4
Pubmed ID
Authors

Philipos Petros Gile, Martina Buljac-Samardzic, Joris Van De Klundert

Abstract

Hospitals in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) face major workforce challenges while having to deal with extraordinary high burdens of disease. The effectiveness of human resource management (HRM) is therefore of particular interest for these SSA hospitals. While, in general, the relationship between HRM and hospital performance is extensively investigated, most of the underlying empirical evidence is from western countries and may have limited validity in SSA. Evidence on this relationship for SSA hospitals is scarce and scattered. We present a systematic review of empirical studies investigating the relationship between HRM and performance in SSA hospitals.Following the PRISMA protocol, searching in seven databases (i.e., Embase, MEDLINE, Web of Science, Cochrane, PubMed, CINAHL, Google Scholar) yielded 2252 hits and a total of 111 included studies that represent 19 out of 48 SSA countries.From a HRM perspective, most studies researched HRM bundles that combined practices from motivation-enhancing, skills-enhancing, and empowerment-enhancing domains. Motivation-enhancing practices were most frequently researched, followed by skills-enhancing practices and empowerment-enhancing practices. Few studies focused on single HRM practices (instead of bundles). Training and education were the most researched single practices, followed by task shifting.From a performance perspective, our review reveals that employee outcomes and organizational outcomes are frequently researched, whereas team outcomes and patient outcomes are significantly less researched. Most studies report HRM interventions to have positively impacted performance in one way or another. As researchers have studied a wide variety of (bundled) interventions and outcomes, our analysis does not allow to present a structured set of effective one-to-one relationships between specific HRM interventions and performance measures. Instead, we find that specific outcome improvements can be accomplished by different HRM interventions and conversely that similar HRM interventions are reported to affect different outcome measures.In view of the high burden of disease, our review identified remarkable little evidence on the relationship between HRM and patient outcomes. Moreover, the presented evidence often fails to provide contextual characteristics which are likely to induce variety in the performance effects of HRM interventions. Coordinated research efforts to advance the evidence base are called for.

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X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 16 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 421 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 421 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 60 14%
Student > Bachelor 38 9%
Student > Ph. D. Student 32 8%
Researcher 30 7%
Lecturer 19 5%
Other 77 18%
Unknown 165 39%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Business, Management and Accounting 59 14%
Nursing and Health Professions 38 9%
Medicine and Dentistry 37 9%
Social Sciences 26 6%
Unspecified 13 3%
Other 70 17%
Unknown 178 42%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 19. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 14 September 2018.
All research outputs
#1,975,930
of 25,385,509 outputs
Outputs from Human Resources for Health
#195
of 1,261 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#39,876
of 341,958 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Human Resources for Health
#6
of 21 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,385,509 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 92nd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,261 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.3. This one has done well, scoring higher than 84% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 341,958 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 88% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 21 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 71% of its contemporaries.