Empirical Research Of Organizational Learning As A Mediator Between Market Orientation And Performance In Urban Private Hospitals

With the development of Chinese market economy and, marketing has gradually become an important means and one of the most important functions, which help the enterprises and organizations to improve their market share, to get the industry competitive advantage. The old marketing concept has also been changed rapidly, and developed into market orientation theory.Since the introduction of market orientation theory, whether academic or business have given their conceptions out depend on their views. Scholars used empirical examination to exam the relationship between market orientation and other variables, and achieved a great deal of research results. The most important thing is the study and discussion of the relationship between market orientation and organizational performance.Because of the different perspective of study and choice of subjects, rich research result are failed to reach a unified understanding. Some scholars believe that market orientation has a direct impact on the level of organizational performance, while other scholars believe that this influence is indirect, which depend on a kind of intermediary variable to transition. In addition, about the research subject selection, scholars are often limited to commercial organizations or businesses. There is little of the research about market orientation in medical industry. This makes it difficult to obtain the guidance of market orientation theory for the managers to practice in this industry.From this point, we choose private hospitals, which are with strong of marketing sense in medical industry, as subject of our study. We try to explore the impaction from market orientation to organizational performance in private hospitals. Excepting Analyzing the direct correlation, we also used organizational learning as an intermediate variable to study its intermediary role in "market-oriented - organizational learning - organizational performance" chain. Based on a large number of literatures analyzing, we constructed the market orientation theoretical model in private hospital industry, and applied the relevant assumptions, then made an empirical testing of the interaction between the variables and the validity of assumptions. Finally, after analysis and discussion, we put forward the recommendations to the private hospitals'managers. Followed this line of thought, the main contents and the sections of this article are like these:Chapter 1: Introduction. In this part, we mainly introduce the background, the study aimed, the significance, the research methods and thesis structure of this article. We tried to find out some remaining space in market orientation theory to explore, and tried to establish a starting point for writing this article. Whit these introductions, we seek to present the main point of the full text to readers, giving them an overall awareness and understanding of the article.Chapter 2: Literature Review. This chapter is mainly about the literature review in market orientation research. We know that the concept of market orientation has been defined by many scholars. They think the concept of organizational behavior made by Kohli and Jwaoski (1990), and the concept of organizational culture made by Narver and Slater (1990) are better. Because except the clear definition, they also proposed a market orientation scale, which made a far-reaching consequences for the other scholars. In this paper, based on analyzing of the literature, we focused on the mechanisms among the market orientation, organizational learning and organizational performance in private hospital industry. And these are the theoretical basis of making research model and assumptions.Chapter 3: Theoretical model and research hypothesis. Based on the analysis of the market orientation literature and research findings, and combined with their own characteristics of private hospital industry, with the chain of "market orientation - organizational learning - organizational innovation", we constructed the private hospital market orientation theory model. In this model, the market orientation is an antecedent variable of organizational learning, and organizational performance is an consequence variable of market orientation and organizational learning. At the same time, organizational learning play an intermediary role between market orientation and organizational performance. Then, depend on the inherent logical relationship among the variables in the model, we proposed research hypothesis, and set the relevant variables.Chapter 4: Research Methods. In this part, we introduced the research methods used in empirical research. By depth interviews, we understood the management features in private hospitals industry, this helped us to revise the scale and design the questionnaire. After a survey of the private hospitals in Changchun City, we collected a large number of research data. We used descriptive statistics, reliability validity analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis as data analysis means. These are effective means to test the theoretical model and assumption laterChapter 5: Analysis and discussion. In this chapter, we use statistical analysis software to deal with the data, which are about the market orientation in private hospitals. We tested the reliability and validity of the scale, and verified the research hypothesis. The results showed that the theoretical models and the relevant assumptions were all right. After the discussion of the test results, we believe that although market orientation has a direct impact on organizational performance, organizational learning plays an intermediary role in this process completely. It means that the impact of market orientation is achieved by organizational learning indirectly.Chapter 6: Conclusions and recommendations. In this chapter, with the empirical analysis and discussion before, we made the conclusion of this paper, and then summed up the management significance and made recommendations for the managers of private hospitals, such as changing management concept, and building market-oriented learning organization. Finally, we analyzed the disadvantage in this paper, and put forward the prospect of future research.In short, this article started from the perspective of organizational behavior, defined the concept of the market orientation in private hospitals industry, research the intermediary role of organizational learning between market orientation and organizational performance. This made a little contribution for market orientation theory about our country's private hospitals industry. It also provides the theoretical guidance for private hospital managers in their business practice.