Leadership in health care: Developing a post-merger strategy for Europe's largest university hospital

Purpose: This paper's aim is to identify existing and developing new concepts of organization, management, and leadership at a large European university hospital; and to evaluate whether mixed qualitative-quantitative methods with both internal and external input can provide helpful views of the possible future of large health care providers. Design/methodology/approach: Using the Delphi method in semi-structured, semi-quantitative interviews, with managers and employees as experts, the authors performed a vertical and a horizontal internal analysis. In addition, input from innovative faculties in other countries was obtained through structured power questions. These two sources were used to create three final scenarios, which evaluated using traditional strategic planning methods. Findings: There is found a collaboration scenario in which faculty and hospital are separated; a split scenario which divides the organization into three independent hospitals; and a corporation scenario in which corporate activities are bundled in three separate entities. Practical implications: In complex mergers of knowledge-driven organizations, the employees of the own organization (in addition to external consultants) might be tapped as a knowledge resource to successful future business models. Originality/value: The paper uses a real world consulting case to present a new set of methods for strategic planning in large health care provider organizations.