CASE: A MATTER OF MOTIVATION: THE DELAYED PROMOTION

Background

With considerable advance notice, the director of health information management (HIM) resigned to take a similar position in a hospital in another state. Within the department it was commonly assumed that you, the assistant director, would be appointed director; however, a month after the former director’s departure, the department was still running without a director.

Day to day operations had apparently been left in your hands (“apparently,” because nothing had been said to you), but the hospital’s chief operating officer had begun to make some of the administrative deci-sions affecting the department. After another month had passed, you learned “through the grapevine” that the hospital had interviewed several candidates for the position of director of health information management. Nobody had been hired.During the next few weeks you tried several times to discuss your uncertain status with the chief operating officer. Each time you tried, you were told simply to “keep doing what you’re now doing.”Four months after the previous director’s departure, you were promoted to director of HIM. The first instruction you received from the chief operating officer was to abolish the position of assistant director.

Instructions

1. Thoroughly analyze and describe the likely state of your ability to “motivate” yourself in your new position. In the process, comment to whatever extent you feel necessary on your level of confidence in the relative stability of your position and explain how it might affect your performance.

2. Describe the most likely motivational state of your HIM staff at the time you assumed the director’s position, and explain in detail why this state probably exists.