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Self-directed Team Models in Healthcare Settings : What is Their Potential for Adding Value to the Intellectual Capital of Healthcare Organisations ?

The concept of intellectual capital (IC) in organisations has been widely researched and its application is well understood, particularly in relation to business and commercial sectors. Despite the unique and vital role that healthcare organisations have in supporting the essential health and wellbeing of populations, awareness of IC and its implications may be underdeveloped in these organisations. Healthcare organisations rely on the expertise of a variety of medical, nursing, and other staff, thus optimisation of this human capital resource must surely be of interest to those that manage, fund, or direct policy in healthcare. Team working is a common feature of healthcare organisations, and it is of interest that a number of IC research papers have drawn attention to team styles in organisations. One particular mode of team working is that of the “self-directed team” model, and there is a substantial body of empirical research that describes the application of self-directed teams in various organisational settings. Within this body of research there are a small number of studies about the use of self-directed teams specifically in healthcare settings. The paucity of these studies and the diverse nature of methodologies employed in them means that it is difficult to generalise findings. This paper is premised on the idea that self-direction in healthcare teams is worthy of further exploration in order to determine whether selfdirection is compatible with the expansion of intellectual capital in healthcare organisations. The aim of this conceptual paper is to propose a framework for describing the relationship between self-directed teams and intellectual capital in healthcare-specific settings. Drawing on a range of perspectives and examples from our own and others’ work, we explore the application of a model of team self direction in a healthcare organisation, and attempt to ascertain the value adding potential of self-directed teams to the organisation’s intellectual capital. We then outline some considerations for further research. Using an existing framework that describes IC in the healthcare sector we sketch out the elements we would expect to see in the IC landscape of a health organisation. We then critically examine both the potential contribution that the self-directed team model may make to the IC of healthcare organisations, and factors that might hinder the agency of the self-directed team model.