Identify Goal
Define Problem
Define Problem
Gather Data
Define Causes
Identify Options
Clarify Problem
Generate Ideas
Evaluate Options
Generate Ideas
Choose the Best Solution
Implement Solution
Select Solution
Take Action
MacLeod offers her own problem solving procedure, which echoes the above steps:
“1. Recognize the Problem: State what you see. Sometimes the problem is covert. 2. Identify: Get the facts — What exactly happened? What is the issue? 3. and 4. Explore and Connect: Dig deeper and encourage group members to relate their similar experiences. Now you're getting more into the feelings and background [of the situation], not just the facts. 5. Possible Solutions: Consider and brainstorm ideas for resolution. 6. Implement: Choose a solution and try it out — this could be role play and/or a discussion of how the solution would be put in place. 7. Evaluate: Revisit to see if the solution was successful or not.”
Many of these problem solving techniques can be used in concert with one another, or multiple can be appropriate for any given problem. It’s less about facilitating a perfect CPS session, and more about encouraging team members to continually think outside the box and push beyond personal boundaries that inhibit their innovative thinking. So, try out several methods, find those that resonate best with your team, and continue adopting new techniques and adapting your processes along the way.
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Values define the culture of an organization. Its philosophy, mission and vision are all a part of this. While large…
Values define the culture of an organization. Its philosophy, mission and vision are all a part of this. While large businesses might have a culture of their own—in most organizations—the leadership is what drives it.
And its importance can’t be overestimated. According to the competing values framework, the culture of an organization is the key to understanding its effectiveness.
The quadrants of the competing values framework, value frameworks and leadership, how the competing values framework can help.
The Competing Values Framework was created by Quinn and Rohrbaugh (1983) to study organizational culture and the kinds of management styles that lead to these.
This theory proposes there are two major dimensions to organizational effectiveness:
There are two types of organizational focus—internal and external. If an organization is focused on the external world, reputation and market share might be its primary motivators. If it focuses on the internal, it’s more concerned with functioning within the organization.
Is a business flexible or does it prioritize stability? If it values flexibility, it will base its decisions on it. This can result in a more agile structure, essential in certain industries such as information technology. If an organization leans toward stability, it will be process-oriented, which is suitable in other industries.
Following the competing value approach, there are four quadrants between flexibility and stability, and internal and external that define organizational culture.
There are four competing value types that emerge from this Competing Values Model. Let’s take a closer look at each of these.
This is a collaborative culture that emerges when an organization is flexible, with internal focus. These are organizations where people are front and centre. If you’ve ever worked at a place that felt like a family-run business, it probably fit into the clan quadrant of the framework.
This is an external-facing, flexible environment ideal for innovation. Creativity and risk-taking are welcome. This culture is typically seen in advertising agencies and other organizations that need to push the boundaries and step outside their comfort zone.
This is an internally-focused organization that prioritizes stability. Think of large, process-driven corporations. The strength of the culture lies in its standardization. This helps cut costs and makes work smooth.
Organizations with a high external motivation with a stable structure fall into this category. These are fiercely competitive organizations that strive to create a strong brand identity and employees work to maintain an external image. Customers are king in this culture.
Each competing value approach can be equally effective depending on the sector the business is operating in and how efficiently the culture is translated into action.
The Competing Values Framework can be used to study leadership styles just as it is used to study organizational values. Here are the eight leadership characteristics that fit within each quadrant of the framework.
If the leader falls into the flexible, internal quadrant, they might be a mentor or facilitator
The flexible, external leader can be described as the innovator or the broker
The stable, internal leader can be described as the monitor and coordinator
The stable, external leader is the dynamic producer and director of the team
Robert E. Quinn, the cofounder of the Center of Positive Organizations, developed this model. He believes that leaders can play a combination of each of these roles at different times. In fact, a leader should be able to balance all these roles depending on the needs of the situation.
Organizations can understand their own culture better using the Competing Values Framework. Once they have done so, they can evaluate if change is needed. Leaders can learn how to function better within the existing culture as well.
In this era of increased globalization and rapid change, businesses need to adapt. By understanding their current values, it’s possible to bring about that change intentionally.
By learning from other organizations through examples of Competing Values Framework, a leader can change their management style if they wish to.
Learning different management styles and analytical tools will help any organization move forward. In Harappa’s High Performing Leaders program, mid-career professionals can refresh their knowledge on the various analytical frameworks. Managers who lack theoretical knowledge—they may have risen through the ranks without formal management training—can learn how to use the tools to take their leadership to the next level. The blended, self-paced learning model fits in well with the life of a busy professional.
Explore Harappa Diaries to learn more about topics such as Who is a Project Manager , Must-Have Skills For Leadership , Top Behavioral Skills For Managers, Operational Manager Skills & Managerial Roles And Skills that will help organizations tap into their employee’s potential.
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The competing values framework was created by Robert Quinn and John Rohrbaugh, emerging from research into the major characteristics of effective organizations. The competing values framework is a tool used to understand and characterize organizational behaviors and beliefs and how they contribute to success.
Competing Values Framework (CVF) | Description | Analysis | Implications | Applications | Examples |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Key Elements (KE) | The Competing Values Framework (CVF) is a model used to assess and understand organizational culture. It categorizes organizational cultures into four major types: Clan, Adhocracy, Hierarchy, and Market, each characterized by unique values, beliefs, and behaviors. | – Identify and categorize organizational cultures into one of the four CVF types. – Assess the dominant cultural traits within an organization. – Consider the interplay of multiple cultures within complex organizations. | – Provides a framework for analyzing and categorizing organizational culture. – Highlights the strengths and weaknesses associated with different cultural types. – Recognizes that organizations may exhibit a blend of cultural characteristics. | – Organizational culture assessment and transformation. – Leadership development and training. – Change management and alignment with strategic goals. | Key Elements Example: Identifying that an organization’s culture is primarily Clan-based, emphasizing collaboration, teamwork, and employee development. |
2. Clan Culture (CC) | Clan Culture is characterized by a family-like environment where members have a strong sense of belonging and collaboration. It values teamwork, mentorship, and employee development. | – Assess the presence of Clan Culture elements, such as strong relationships, mentorship programs, and a focus on employee well-being. – Evaluate how Clan Culture impacts decision-making and communication within the organization. – Consider the advantages and disadvantages of Clan Culture in achieving organizational goals. | – Fosters a supportive and cohesive work environment. – Encourages employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention. – May face challenges related to adaptability and competitiveness in fast-paced environments. | – Employee engagement and retention strategies. – Team building and leadership development programs. – Enhancing collaboration and communication within teams. | Clan Culture Example: A family-owned business that prioritizes close-knit relationships among employees and emphasizes mentorship and personal growth. |
3. Adhocracy Culture (AC) | Adhocracy Culture is characterized by a dynamic and entrepreneurial spirit that values innovation, experimentation, and risk-taking. It encourages employees to be creative and explore new ideas. | – Assess the presence of Adhocracy Culture elements, such as a focus on innovation, experimentation, and flexible work structures. – Evaluate how Adhocracy Culture influences decision-making and adaptability. – Consider the advantages and challenges of Adhocracy Culture in driving innovation and growth. | – Promotes innovation, adaptability, and rapid response to change. – Encourages creativity and a willingness to take calculated risks. – May face challenges related to stability and maintaining established processes. | – Innovation and product development initiatives. – Encouraging a culture of continuous learning and experimentation. – Nurturing creative problem-solving and idea generation. | Adhocracy Culture Example: A technology startup that values experimentation, encourages employees to pursue innovative projects, and promotes a culture of “out-of-the-box” thinking. |
4. Hierarchy Culture (HC) | Hierarchy Culture is characterized by a structured and controlled environment with clear roles, processes, and a focus on efficiency and stability. It values consistency, rules, and formalized procedures. | – Assess the presence of Hierarchy Culture elements, such as clearly defined roles, strict processes, and a focus on efficiency. – Evaluate how Hierarchy Culture affects decision-making and organizational stability. – Consider the strengths and limitations of Hierarchy Culture in achieving operational efficiency and compliance. | – Ensures clear roles, accountability, and adherence to established procedures. – Supports stability, predictability, and consistency in operations. – May encounter challenges related to adaptability and innovation in rapidly changing markets. | – Process optimization and efficiency improvement initiatives. – Compliance and risk management efforts. – Clarifying roles and responsibilities within organizations. | Hierarchy Culture Example: A government agency with strict protocols, clear hierarchy, and a focus on procedural compliance to maintain consistency and stability. |
5. Market Culture (MC) | Market Culture is characterized by a competitive and results-oriented environment that values achievement, customer focus, and profitability. It encourages employees to set and meet ambitious goals. | – Assess the presence of Market Culture elements, such as a strong focus on competition, results-driven behavior, and customer-centricity. – Evaluate how Market Culture influences decision-making and goal attainment. – Consider the advantages and challenges of Market Culture in achieving competitiveness and profitability. | – Drives a strong focus on achieving market success and profitability. – Encourages a competitive spirit and customer-centric mindset. – May face challenges related to work-life balance and employee well-being in highly competitive environments. | – Sales and revenue growth strategies. – Setting and aligning ambitious performance targets. – Cultivating a customer-focused mindset among employees. | Market Culture Example: A financial institution where employees are incentivized based on achieving sales targets and profitability, with a strong emphasis on competition and customer service. |
Table of Contents
Based on the study of culture, leadership, structure, and information processing, Quinn and Rohrbaugh discovered 39 different indicators of effectiveness. These were then analyzed for patterns and distilled into two major dimensions of organizational success:
The competing values framework has been recognized as one of the 40 most important frameworks in the history of business. It has wide-ranging applications in leadership competency, organizational culture, financial strategy , information processing, and life cycle stage development.
Four major models, or cultural archetypes, are derived from the degree to which a company is internally or externally focused and flexible or stable.
The interaction between each archetype appears to send conflicting messages, which gives the competing values framework its name. For instance, an organization may need to be flexible while also displaying control and stability at the same time.
With that said, let’s take a look at each archetype below:
The organizational values of the framework can also be used to model leadership styles.
Below is a brief look at some leadership types based on the hierarchies listed in the previous section:
To conclude, we’ll discuss some examples from each of the four main archetypes of the competing values framework.
The clan culture is often found in start-ups and smaller companies, but it can also be found in companies that employ the franchise model.
One particular example is Tom’s of Maine, an American business and Certified B Corporation that manufactures natural health products such as toothpaste, soap, and deodorant.
Founder Tom Chappell stressed the importance of respectful relationships between co-workers, customers, owners, suppliers, the community, and the environment.
Employees are provided with a safe environment to grow and learn and the culture is more reminiscent of an extended family, with Chappell serving as a mentor and parental figure to subordinates.
Pixar has a flat organizational structure which creates the ideal conditions for adhocracy to thrive.
The company has a proven track record of both artistic and technological innovations and is known as a leading pioneer in computer animation.
Pixar is proud to proclaim that, unlike its competitors, it has never purchased scripts or ideas from external parties.
All of the company’s worlds and stories from movies such as Toy Story , Finding Nemo, and Cars came from a creative team who were encouraged to take risks and push the metaphorical envelope.
Indeed, Pixar understands that true creative talent is rare and that management’s role is to not avoid risk entirely but ensure the company can recover easily when inevitable failures occur.
Most investment banks such as Goldman Sachs operate under the hierarchical model with a strict and inflexible structure.
Each is characterized by the following levels with only minor derivations between companies:
Each level is associated with certain rituals, benefits, and responsibilities, and employees need to be competitive and possess extreme levels of attention to detail.
Progression through these levels is well defined and has not changed considerably over time.
To encourage employees to work under the intense pressure of a hierarchical structure, promotions are frequent and there is little exclusivity to the titles in most investment banks.
Goldman Sachs, for example, has over 10,000 vice presidents and many firms also have thousands of managing directors.
Amazon is an oft-cited example of the market culture. Numerous former employees have spoken about a culture that expected the very best they could deliver and to be constantly climbing the ladder.
There were also claims in a 2015 New York Times article that if employees hit the wall – a phrase used to describe one reaching their emotional or physical limits – they were told the only solution was to “climb the wall”.
While the company has made efforts to address its controversial culture in recent years, Amazon’s obvious focus to be the best means it embodies the best (and worst) aspects of the market model for now.
One look at the company’s leadership principles confirms this, with the blurb under the “ Deliver results” principle reading as follows: “ Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle. ”
Oversimplification of organizational culture.
One of the primary drawbacks is the potential oversimplification of complex organizational cultures. Reducing an organization’s culture to one of four categories may not capture the nuanced and multifaceted nature of actual working environments.
There’s a risk that using the CVF could lead to stereotyping or mislabeling of organizations. This might result in misguided strategies or change initiatives that don’t align with the true nature of the organization.
Organizations identified with one particular culture type might resist moving towards another, even when necessary, due to a deep-rooted identification with their current cultural type.
The framework’s focus on competing values can make it challenging for leaders to effectively balance these values, especially in dynamic and complex environments.
Assessing and measuring organizational culture based on the CVF can be challenging and subjective, often requiring in-depth analysis and interpretation.
In organizational culture assessment.
CVF is particularly useful for assessing and understanding an organization’s prevailing culture, providing a structured approach to analyze and categorize cultural traits.
The framework can be used in strategic planning to align organizational strategies with the underlying cultural values.
Leaders can use the CVF to develop skills and approaches that are congruent with their organization’s cultural type or to adapt their style to drive cultural change.
The CVF can guide change management processes by identifying cultural shifts that are necessary and feasible within the context of the existing cultural values.
Identifying cultural characteristics.
Begin by identifying the dominant cultural characteristics of the organization using the four types of cultures defined in the CVF.
Analyze the current and future needs of the organization to determine which cultural characteristics are most beneficial and aligned with organizational goals.
Develop strategies and initiatives that reinforce the desired cultural characteristics. This might involve changes in leadership style, communication, decision-making processes, and human resource practices.
Implement programs and initiatives that facilitate the desired cultural change, ensuring involvement and buy-in from all levels of the organization.
Regularly monitor the cultural shifts and adapt strategies as necessary. This includes ongoing assessment of the organization’s cultural alignment with its strategic goals.
Enhanced understanding of organizational culture.
The CVF provides a comprehensive understanding of the organization’s culture, aiding in identifying strengths and areas for development.
By aligning cultural values with organizational strategies, the CVF can lead to more effective and coherent strategic implementation.
Understanding the dominant cultural type can guide leaders and managers in adopting practices and behaviors that are more effective within their specific cultural context.
When cultural traits are effectively aligned with organizational goals and strategies, it can lead to increased overall effectiveness and success.
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In this chapter, we present a view of problem solving as a bundle of skills, knowledge and abilities that are required to deal effectively with complex non-routine situations in different domains. This includes cognitive aspects of problem solving, such as causal reasoning, model building, rule induction, and information integration. These abilities are comparatively well covered by existing tests and relate to existing theories. However, non-cognitive components, such as motivation, self-regulation and social skills, which are clearly important for real-life problem solving have only just begun to be covered in assessment. We conclude that currently there is no single assessment instrument that captures problem solving competency in a comprehensive way and that a number of challenges must be overcome to cover a construct of this breadth effectively. Research on some important components of problem solving is still underdeveloped and will need to be expanded before we can claim a thorough, scientifically backed understanding of real-world problem solving. We suggest that a focus on handling and acting within complex systems (systems competency) may be a suitable starting point for such an integrative approach.
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The authors wish to thank Bruce Beswick, Esther Care, and Mark Wilson for extensive and helpful comments to earlier versions of this manuscript. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be constructed as a potential conflict of interest. The research was supported by a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) to the first author (Az. Fu 173/14).
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Correspondence to Joachim Funke .
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Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
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University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
Mark Wilson
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Funke, J., Fischer, A., Holt, D.V. (2018). Competencies for Complexity: Problem Solving in the Twenty-First Century. In: Care, E., Griffin, P., Wilson, M. (eds) Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills. Educational Assessment in an Information Age. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65368-6_3
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Policies and ethics
BMC Public Health volume 22 , Article number: 210 ( 2022 ) Cite this article
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Promoting health equity and reducing heath inequities is a foundational aim and ethical imperative in public health. There has been limited attention to and research on the ethical issues inherent in promoting health equity and reducing health inequities that public health practitioners experience in their work. The aim of the study was to explore how public health providers identified and navigated ethical issues and their management related to promoting health equity within services focused on mental health promotion and preventing harms of substance use.
Semi-structured individual interviews and focus groups were conducted with 32 public health practitioners who provided public-health oriented services related to mental health promotion and prevention of substance use harms (e.g. harm reduction) in one Canadian province.
Participants engaged in the basic social process of navigating conflicting value systems . In this process, they came to recognize a range of ethically challenging situations related to health equity within a system that held values in conflict with health equity. The extent to which practitioners recognized, made sense of, and acted on these fundamental challenges was dependent on the degree to which they had developed a critical public health consciousness. Ethically challenging situations had impacts for practitioners, most importantly, the experiences of responding emotionally to ethical issues and the experience of living in dissonance when working to navigate ethical issues related to promoting health equity in their practice within a health system based in biomedical values.
There is an immediate need for practice-oriented tools for recognizing ethical dilemmas and supporting ethical decision making related to health equity in public health practice in the context of mental health promotion and prevention of harms of substance use. An increased focus on understanding public health ethical issues and working collaboratively and reflexively to address the complexity of equity work has the potential to strengthen equity strategies and improve population health.
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Promoting health equity and reducing health inequities are considered both moral imperatives and ethical endeavors in public health (PH) [ 1 ]. Health inequities are unjust, unfair and result from potentially remediable conditions that impact and are implicated in the development of poor health outcomes [ 2 ]. Promoting health equity requires addressing the conditions that produce health inequities through engaging affected communities and taking action on the social determinants of health [ 1 ].
Historically, bioethics has been dominated by clinical biomedical issues that are concerned with the relationship between individual providers and clients in the provision of acute care and being able to enact right courses of action [ 3 ]. The underpinnings of PH, rooted in social justice, illuminate many ethical tensions in policy and practice related to communities and populations that are not generally identified or of concern in biomedical ethics [ 4 , 5 ]. To date, there has been almost no attention to and research on the ethical issues inherent in reducing health inequities experienced by PH practitioners as they navigate these issues [ 6 ]. For example, there is considerable work related to advocacy for and integration of health equity in various areas of public health practice but little focus on the ethical issues associated with implementation and integration [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ]. In previous work, we identified and named a range of ethical tensions encountered by public health practitioners working in mental health promotion and prevention of harms of substance use [ 11 ]. The purpose of this article is to report a grounded theory study of PH practitioners and their processes of navigating ethical issues related to health equity in PH practice of mental health promotion and prevention of harms of substance use in Canada.
Dominant health care ethics theoretical perspectives and frameworks are primarily attuned to assessing and addressing individual and biomedical issues [ 12 , 13 , 14 ]. Several authors have pointed out that ethical concerns in PH have not been adequately addressed through dominant bioethical frameworks [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ]. Others have noted that PH providers cannot simply adopt the principles of biomedical ethics but require a critical perspective on philosophical and theoretical approaches to dealing with PH ethical concerns [ 19 , 20 ].
There has been growing interest in and expansion of the field of PH ethics as an area of inquiry separate from clinical bioethics [ 14 , 21 , 22 ]. PH ethics is a field of applied ethics distinct from biomedical ethics in that it: 1) focuses on populations rather than individuals; 2) brings equity to the forefront; 3) considers upstream action on the social determinants of health; and 4) aims to prevent illness and disease [ 23 ]. Thus, the ethics of PH is as distinct from traditional bioethics as is the practice of PH from biomedically oriented approaches to care.
From the time of Virchow, known as the founder of the critical public health movement, to the present, PH has placed a strong value on advocacy, attention to inequity, political and structural influences on health, as well as solidarity and interdependence [ 4 , 24 ]. The driving force of PH ethical frameworks are not only the community and population health-oriented nature of PH [ 25 ], but also those of social justice and equity [ 14 ]. Thus, the social justice foundations of PH give rise to a different value system than guiding practice in the overall health care system, which despite being considered universal and publicly funded in Canada, continues to be driven by a rationalized illness orientation with associated values of cure, efficiency and cost-effectiveness [ 26 ]. In turn, this creates many ethical tensions at the PH policy and program level that arise when working within communities and at the population level [ 4 , 5 ]. Thus, the location of the PH system in Canada within the larger biomedically-oriented health care system dominated by individualistic values has created value tensions between PH and health care writ large [ 27 ].
To advance ethical theory building for PH practice, it is critical to ground ethical perspectives in the everyday ethical concerns that arise for practitioners and decision makers [ 28 ]. The goal of this grounded theory study was to describe the basic social process of navigating conflicting value systems, including how PH practitioners identify, make sense of, and respond to ethical issues in their practice related to promoting mental health and preventing harms from substance use. The research questions for this study were: (1) what are the specific ethical issues encountered by PH practitioners in their efforts to reduce health inequities associated with mental health and substance use, and (2) how do PH practitioners navigate and manage these ethical issues in their practice? Our goal is to use insights from this theory in forthcoming work to develop a framework for ethical PH decision making.
We employed grounded theory methodology for this study because it is useful for exploring, identifying and analyzing complex processes over time, in particular in situations that have not been previously studied or where existing research has left gaps [ 29 , 30 ]. Specifically, we used Charmaz’ [ 31 ] constructivist grounded theory analytic methods. From this perspective, shared understandings of a phenomenon are co-constructed by participants and researchers during the production of and interaction with data throughout the research process.
This study is one of four interrelated studies in the Equity Lens in Public Health (ELPH) program of research [ 32 ]. The purpose of this five-year program of research was to guide and inform learning about the integration of an equity lens in PH in the large geographically diverse province of British Columbia, Canada and to contribute knowledge about health inequities reduction during a time of PH renewal in Canada. As part of this renewal, key strategic documents, including A Framework for Core Functions in Public Health [ 33 ], and the Guiding Framework for Public Health in British Columbia [ 34 ], identified the importance of applying an equity lens to all PH programs and services. While several Canadian provinces have included attention to vulnerable populations or incorporation of health equity into public health programs, the British Columbia framework specifically names the application of an equity lens as cross cutting theme to be addressed in all public health programs. The Core Functions Framework [ 33 ] consisted of 21 core programs in four broad areas: health improvement; disease, injury, and illness prevention; environmental health; and health emergency management. In the Guiding Framework, these 21 programs were integrated into seven visionary goals reflecting broad areas of public health focus: healthy living and healthy communities; maternal, child and family health; positive mental health and preventing substance use harms; communicable disease prevention; injury prevention; environmental health; and public health emergency management. A focused provincial mental health and substance use framework was also subsequently developed with the vision of transforming care systems away from acute crisis-oriented approaches toward an equity and prevention orientation across the life course. For this study, in collaboration with regional health authority and government partners, mental health promotion and prevention of substance use harms were selected as the PH areas of focus for this study to learn about ethical decision making in practice.
In collaboration with health authority partners and through advertising in professional forums, we used purposive and snowball sampling to identify PH practitioners with responsibilities for mental health promotion and/or prevention of harms of substance use in their work. The main inclusion criteria were working in a public health program that had a primary emphasis on mental health promotion or prevention of harms of substance use such as maternal child health programs and harm reduction programs. We aimed to recruit participants who had direct experience with supporting clients in universal or targeted programs intended to reduce health inequities. Participants were invited to contact the research team directly or, through participation in one of the three other ELPH studies, participants were asked if they would be willing to share their contact information to learn more about this study.
There were 32 participants in this study (28 female and 4 male), from all geographical regions in the province ( Fraser Health, Island Health, Vancouver Costal Health, Northern Health, and Interior Health ) as well as the BC Provincial Health Services Authority, which plans and coordinates access to specialized health-care services including mental health and substance use services. Participants held PH roles within harm reduction programs, pre and postnatal support, and HIV and communicable disease programs. These programs were funded and primarily delivered through health authorities which are quasi governmental regional bodies responsible for all of the health care services in the province including public health.
Eleven participants self-identified as working in traditional PH staff roles (e.g. PH workers or nurses) and 21 worked more explicitly in harm reduction and sexually transmitted infection programs. Twenty-five of the participants (78%) identified as Registered Nurses. Overall participants had practiced for an average of 6.05 years (range 6 months to 20 years) in their current position and an average of 10.26 years (range 6 months to 40 years) in PH. All but one participant had completed post-secondary education programs. These demographics reflect the age, gender, and educational characteristics of the general Canadian nursing workforce [ 35 ]
We conducted 29 semi-structured individual interviews (primarily via telephone) and one face to face focus group with three participants between November 2014 and February 2016. Interviews lasted approximately 60 minutes. Semi-structured and open-ended interview questions were used to encourage responses important to the participants. We recorded and transcribed interviews verbatim, and transcripts were verified by the study coordinator. Following each interview, observations and reflections were recorded and integrated into the analysis. Data were analyzed using NVivo© Version 10.
Five of the six study team members (four faculty and one research assistant) read the interviews and generated a set of inductive codes for the coding framework from the first few interviews. The research assistant continued coding the interviews line-by-line. Participant words were retained when appropriate in code names. Analytic distinctions were established through the inductive process of constant comparison, an integral part of the grounded theory analytic process that helps researchers move codes into higher level concepts while staying close to the data. Specifically, we compared incidents within the same interview and compared incidents and statements across interviews. Memoing and diagramming documented the analytic process and supported continued conceptualizing and theorizing. We held in-depth team discussions to further the data analysis through establishing relationships and differences between concepts, ultimately developing a grounded theory [ 31 ].
We took detailed notes during data analysis to create an audit trail of our analytic process. The research team used reflexivity to maintain awareness of structural influences and power relations throughout the research process. The sixth member of the team held the role of knowledge user and reviewed the grounded theory and the manuscript and provided feedback on credibility, originality, resonance, and usefulness, hallmarks of quality for constructivist grounded theory [ 31 ].
Grounded theorists assume that participants in the study share a basic social problem with which they are grappling. In this situation, the basic social problem that participants experienced in their health equity work was a set of ethical challenges that arose from the disjuncture they experienced between the values and goals of the healthcare system (including the PH system) and the values, goals, and standards that guided their practice. This problem was then resolved or managed by the participants through engagement in some type of action named as either a basic social process, a social-psychological process, or a social-structural process [ 29 ]. In this study, to address this basic social problem, participants engaged in the basic social process of navigating conflicting value systems in their health equity work in public health (Fig. 1 ).
The process of health equity work in public health: Navigating conflicting value systems
Participants identified coming to recognize a range of ethically challenging situations related to health equity within a system that held values that conflicted with their own. The extent to which an individual practitioner recognized these ethical challenges, however, was dependent on the degree to which they held or embraced a critical PH consciousness. Clearly, the recognition of ethical issues informed the way that they responded emotionally to, made sense of and took action on these issues. These ethically challenging situations, regardless of the extent to which the practitioner held a critical PH consciousness, impacted clients, practitioners and the health system itself through this process. Most significantly for PH practitioners, they experienced dissonance when working to navigate ethical issues related to health equity in their practice in a health system with different values.
Participants described a range of ethically challenging situations that centered on differing agendas between provincial or regional health systems and PH practice. These were situations in which they experienced value conflicts between system or organizational values and the values of PH. Participants described ethically challenging situations as those that arose when PH values or ethical principles were overlooked, dismissed, eroded or violated. These situations reflected tensions between competing health system and health equity values.
We briefly introduce four core ethical tensions here and describe these in more depth elsewhere [ 11 ]. The tensions were: 1) biomedical versus social determinants of health agenda, 2) systems driven care versus situational care, 3) systemic stigma and discrimination versus respect for persons, and 4) trust and autonomy versus surveillance and control. To varying extents, participants recognized that they were attempting to do health equity work “on the ground” in organizations in which the dominant health system focus was biomedicine with lack of value for PH generally or health equity specifically. They also highlighted how the pressure of meeting systems needs and requirements (manifested by practice structures such as procedures, guidelines, checklists) drove PH work rather than the situational needs of clients. Systemic stigma and discrimination were identified as pervasive barriers within the health care systems, particularly in relation to mental health and substance use, and participants voiced concerns about sending clients to services knowing or not knowing how they would be treated. Lastly, participants identified that they often experienced ethical tensions in situations in which preserving trust and choice came into conflict with requirements for surveillance and responses that emphasized social control rather than social support. They reported having to navigate carefully the issues of confidentiality to ensure public protection and to preserve trust and autonomy.
The extent to which public health providers recognized these tensions as ethical challenges was dependent on the degree to which they held or embraced strong commitments to social justice and health equity, which we have described as a critical PH consciousness. Participants described formative experiences, including how they were parented, their age and involvement in other societal movements, and their exposure to people who created a milieu that contributed to their awareness of social justice issues. One participant described their own process of developing social awareness:
I think as I got into nursing I met – inside and outside of nursing – you know, going to college and university – I met women that were involved in the women’s movement. I shared a place with a group of other women who were very socially active...we were all pretty activist in our hearts…then it’s like a snowball around social justice issues. (S4 - 31)
At that time, she was supported by a progressive manager who encouraged creativity and did not micromanage; thus, she felt an increased sense of autonomy and confidence in speaking out. However, this participant also shared that that their equity perspectives were quite different from many of their peers who were raised in more conservative environments and had more conservative experiences.
The depth of reflection on the situations that participants described was moving, and even motivating at times. In their personal reflections, they described processing these emotional responses as part of how they came to make sense of the situation.
Participants described experiencing a range of emotional responses during and after recognizing an ethically challenging situation. In some cases, it took time for them to reflect on what had happened and link what they were feeling to an ethical tension or moral distress or uncertainty. Moral distress occurs when a practitioner knows the right thing to do but is unable to enact an ethical decision due to internal or external constraints [ 36 , 37 ]. This is in contrast to moral uncertainty in which a practitioner may not be aware of the right actions. Primarily participants expressed negative self-oriented emotions, including feeling uncomfortable, uneasy, uncertain, sad and miserable. They worried whether they were doing the right thing and felt personally responsible for the outcomes even though, for the most part, what happened was out of their control.
Well unfortunately with the client, I’m not sure, the client is now missing and I think that the client is probably returned to an exploitative situation because that was the only option. I honestly have to say I probably cried, that happened on a Friday…. I did everything I could, and I just couldn’t, you know. We determined that there was no solution and I probably cried for just hours that weekend, you know. (S4-28)
In addition to self-oriented emotions, participants also identified emotional responses directed at the system. They feared that the equity perspective that would have facilitated access to appropriate resources was losing ground to the values of the dominant biomedical system. This self-reflection not only facilitated identification of emotional responses, but it also initiated a process of thinking through and making sense of the different elements of the ethical situation, including contributing factors, context, and personal perspectives.
Making sense refers to the process of how PH practitioners thought and reasoned about the various ethical situations that they encountered. These interpretations then informed the actions that they took or did not take. Participants described three strategies that they employed in making sense: 1) destigmatizing their perceptions, 2) learning to think ethically together; and 3) talking through situations collectively.
Many participants experienced a steep learning curve when they first started working with populations experiencing systemic and structural vulnerability. Their initial perceptions were often biased and judgmental, based on stereotypes and past personal and practice experiences. Participants described the processes that they used to acknowledge and examine these biases, including framing the issues differently (such as considering the social determinants of health), reflecting on why they felt uncomfortable, and seeking out opportunities to learn from other professionals and those with lived experience. A participant shared the personal story of growth:
I was very judgmental, had a lot of stigma … over the years that was unlocked for me and I forced myself to be a street nurse because I thought “you know [name]… you have way too much stigma and discrimination towards this bunch of people.” So that’s what I did. I forced myself to go into this work to change myself. And over time it did happen, and I began to understand. And I think that’s the crux, and it was for me. And from talking to the students, that they’ve had no exposure to date, they don’t understand, right? And once they hear people’s stories out there, I tell you, they come back with such a different perspective. Such a different perspective. It’s unbelievable. (S4-20)
This participant, a street nurse with their practice focused on supporting marginalized populations characterized by extreme poverty and homelessness, highlights a change in thinking over time, increasing their critical PH consciousness and capacity to think more critically about their practice, through intentional learning facilitated by continual engagement with clients. An important aspect of this process was recognizing the history and context in which an individual, family or community is embedded. When they framed this bigger picture for themselves, they gained insight into the broader context of the situations that they encountered helping them navigate through the issues and identify appropriate actions. Other participants with a more underdeveloped sense of PH, for example those newer to PH, had comments that were more biomedically focused. For example, one participant shared that within their team, understandings of harm reduction varied greatly:
I’ve had colleagues say, “Oh, I had a great harm reduction conversation with this client about cocaine. I told them never to use cocaine, and how bad it is, and how it will mess up their nose, and what their future will be like. (S4-15)
This colleague demonstrated a narrower, biomedically-focused approach to harm reduction, thus providing less opportunity to explore equity-oriented solutions to addressing the harms of substance use.
Some participants noted that they used or wanted to learn to use the language of ethics to make sense of and bring ethical issues to light. They shared that they often did not use ethical language in conversations with their colleagues but in hindsight saw that they were dealing with ethical concerns:
I always feel I fall short a little bit in these conversations because I think sometimes for me that the ethical uncertainty and ethical distress, they’re terms that I think I experience all the time but it’s hard to language. (S4-08)
They reflected that it would be helpful to be able to articulate what the ethical issues are and how to address them in ways that were not just mechanistic, but were strongly grounded in health equity principles.
Participants also identified the importance of being able to identify core ethical values in their workplace, including health equity and social justice, and infusing these values through their decision making and actions.
I think that… it’s a collective goal of our staff to increase equity to healthcare and better wellbeing for the folks that we work with. I think that we’re practicing in alignment with our values as much as we can. As a supervisor, helping staff to be in as much in alignment with their values is one of the most important things and I see it as vital to staff retention and staff health and their ability to support other people. (S4-08)
Being able to practice in teams in which these shared values were held was seen to promote work satisfaction and retention, maximize the quality of care, and avoid staff burnout. Some participants wondered if PH and street nursing attracted a “certain kind of person” that shared these ethical and political values. Some organizations had more control than others over how to hire people specifically for these expressed interests and commitments, with a greater challenge noted in collective agreement environments.
The support of like-minded colleagues was noted as being critical for being able to talk through issues, explore options for action and confirm decisions. This support may be formal (e.g., through established communities of practice, professional organizations, reflective supervision, or team debriefing) or informal (e.g., friends who are nurses but not colleagues).
We don’t work in isolation, that’s for sure. We do have colleagues and people that we can talk to within our team, run things by. You know, “what do you think I should do in this case?” And I’ve often heard through talking with colleagues, we’ve often asked that question: “okay, how far do you go with this?” or “well do you really think that’s a good idea?” So those kinds of phrases that let me know that support that I have from my colleagues is excellent. And I really trust their opinion, and I know I’m not alone in doing this work, right? (S4-12)
Alternatively, practitioners lost a significant source of support and education when workplaces and teams were structured in such a way that there was no time or opportunity to consult and engage in dialogue. There was also reduced trust within the team when there was continual change in team composition, membership and leadership, in particular if colleagues were not seen as practicing from the same paradigm:
Not everybody is sympathetic. They can’t understand why they are doing the things they are doing. Yeah, ethically that is another challenge as well, dealing with your peers and dealing with fellow healthcare nurses that are not on the same page (S4-20).
Some participants shared that they had to make decisions about whether it was worth their time or energy to have conversations with or challenge the understanding of certain colleagues. They then could, in fact, feel isolated and in some cases even stigmatized within their teams. Overall, the outcome of this sense making process, whether internal or collective, was for PH practitioners to then feel more confident in making decisions on what actions were appropriate to take to address the situation.
Taking action refers to the approaches and strategies that PH practitioners used to respond to and resolve the ethical situations they encountered in their practice. Once they recognized and made sense of an ethical situation involving health equity and reflected on and processed their emotional responses, participants acted based on their level of critical PH consciousness and the extent to which they were in a supportive practice environment often having to navigate conflicting value systems. This included: 1) advocating and 2) doing whatever it takes.
The concept of advocacy was framed by participants from systems responsibility and population rights perspectives. Health systems were described as operating from standardized efficiency approaches (i.e., ticking the boxes on a form and saying the job is done) in which there was no place for caring, creativity and individualizing. Advocacy strategies included getting on committees to move issues forward, lobbying for additional resources, channeling venting into action, and keeping an eye open for timely opportunities to insert key equity messages.
I think what we really need to do as healthcare workers, as women, and as people in these jobs, is we need to have, have a bigger political voice. Because nothing’s going to change on the lower levels unless we’re more vocal about it. So for me, it’s hard because I don’t like to speak out to the “up-aboves” and I don’t like to push. But unless we, as groups that have this, or you know, as being a mom myself, for getting people organized together, voting and going to more political action, I don’t think that it’s going to change. (S4-04)
Advocacy was often focused on creating opportunities for the voices of people with lived experiences to be heard and valued at decision-making tables, including creating and resourcing peer advisory committees. One participant described how they integrated client voice into ongoing strategic community planning:
We are about to go into a round table process with [community leaders] to talk about moving forward on establishing supervised consumption services and what that could look like. And a big part of the campaign is we have a peer advisory committee, so we have people with experiential knowledge related to illicit drug use who are involved with the campaign and who we want to foreground their experience and their voices in moving forward on this stuff. You know, the whole “nothing about us without us” concept. (S4-08)
This type of advocacy for experiential voices that are often excluded to be included is consistent with key strategies for promoting health equity through client and community engagement and social inclusion [ 11 ].
Participants demonstrated through their stories that they were persistent, resilient, creative and sometimes subversive to obtain the resources and supports needed by their clients in spite of conflicting value systems. For example, some participants leveraged their relationships with other programs and agencies and bartered resources. They circumvented organizational policy and role definition barriers. “Work arounds” were related to accessing resources, referring quickly, sharing information about clients across systems, and maximizing clients’ ability to meeting criteria for accessing services such as housing.
I have other methods that I can obtain things, you know. And it’s not illegal just so you know! It’s just people I can call and say “can you send this?” and they do, and we trade things back and forth, or I can go up to the local hospital and say “look, this is what I need. It’s a lot less expensive for me to give 10 of these than it is if we’d have to send the family in through emergency.” So that’s not a threat. When you explain it to somebody like that, they’re like “okay what do you need? (S4-16)
Some participants found themselves in ethically challenging situations in which they either had bend the rules to create trust or subject their clients to greater social control. In this example, the participant chose to work the system rather than disadvantaging the client who may not persist further after experiencing a barrier:
And I’m not your average nurse (laughter). You know, I kind of bend the rules for clients where I can, and I think they really appreciate that. And I think it’s just kind of, you know, whether that’s sending in an STI sample that’s for somebody without a PHN [Personal Health Number] or whatnot. They just really appreciate that kind of thing, and it goes that extra mile. And then you build trust with them, and then they tell their friends about it and all of a sudden you’ve got a bigger marginalized clientele that’s coming in and people start to know you for being a more relaxed nurse. (S4-26)
Taking action was not achieved in discrete actions that were easily laid out in a stepwise process. There were multiple actions and approaches based on how participants made sense of ethically challenging situations that were complex and intertwined in order to navigate conflicting value systems.
When PH practitioners recognized and attempted to navigate ethically challenging situations there was an impact or effect on them, and also on their clients and the health system in some way. The result of the process of navigating conflicting value systems was experienced as dissonance by participants, where they knew what was possible in a strong PH system focused on health equity, yet they saw the reality of the bio-medically oriented system in which health inequities and marginalization were experienced by their clients. PH practitioners thus often felt: 1) powerless as they witnessed inequities; 2) feeling like a stranger in a strange land; and 3) like they were living in a middle ground. Ultimately, they felt caught between their employer and their professional obligations and the feeling of responsibility, which ran the risk of leading to burnout.
Participants frequently witnessed and heard stories of health inequities lived by the clients they served and yet had no power or resources to address these inequities. PH practitioners described seeing limited to no systemic response to addressing the determinants of health in a substantive way. It weighed heavily on them when they saw what needed to happen but were not able to do what they knew could make a difference. That, coupled with high workloads, was felt to lead to poorer personal outcomes for participants who experienced burnout.
Well I think that’s… certainly part of the burnout is you go home from work for the day and you think “oh, I didn’t get that done, I didn’t get that done, I haven’t been to that school for 2 weeks, and I need to…” you know? You carry it home with you. As hard as you try not to, you know I wake up in the night thinking about this kid or that kid or that teacher and it takes a lot of energy to put that aside and just be at home. You know, “that’s my job” it’s separated out, compartmentalize. That takes energy. (S4-18)
Participants described feeling a sense of powerlessness in holding the position of continually bearing witness to inequities experienced as mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausting. Compassion fatigue and burnout were readily evident in participant stories.
Depending on the work team and organization, some practitioners felt as if they were standing alone, isolated in their ethical and moral distress, in their work to reduce health inequities. They felt responsible for taking action and being the voice of advocacy on their team. One strategy used by practitioners who felt isolated in their approach to their work was to find other like-minded people external to their organization with whom they could work through ethically challenging situations. For example, one participant noted:
Well it really depends, because I have a little gaggle of friends who are nurses, and some are not, but mostly nurses who I can talk to about this and they agree and I don’t feel like I’m a stranger in a strange land . (S4-02)
Another practitioner also identified the feeling of isolation on the team stating: “But it is quite embarrassing to always be the person bringing it up. Like it’s like beating the dead horse.,,So it’s awkward. But it’s not something that’s okay to just see what happens and ignore it” (S4-15). The impact of being alone or being embarrassed affected the way they reflected on their quality of work life and ability to do their job and thus their willingness to stay in their position.
The final impact of navigating conflicting value systems was to make the decision to settle on something less than their ideal. One participant framed their tactic as resigning to live in the middle ground, having considered the benefits and drawbacks to continuing to practice based on PH values.
I personally I think I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I feel like I’ve sort of made a deal and I live in the middle ground, meaning there are certain limitations to my work that I have to accept if I’m going to work for this organization, which there’s lots of perks, including a nice stable pay cheque, whereas if I quit and work for [another community organization] for example, where you get to be a bit more radical, some of those perks are gone. So, I feel like it’s trying to balance personal responsibilities for my family and my personal integrity and then trying to find a way within [health authority], which is a very hierarchical bureaucracy – and I mean I feel like I work in a good little pocket where we try and subvert some of the policies. (S4-07)
Working out this balance was important for PH practitioners as they came to understand how to survive in conflicting value systems and still maintain enough of a degree of health equity thinking that they could feel they were meeting their ethical obligations. Ultimately, some participants left the workplace when they felt that they were no longer able to make sense of or live ethically with the work that they were doing.
Overall, our findings support research emerging from the evolving field of PH ethics. Specifically, the findings highlight the tension that arises for PH practitioners when the obligation to focus on the health and well-being of populations is situated within health care delivery systems that are primarily structured to focus on individuals and acute care needs [ 14 , 38 ]. The basic social process identified by PH practitioners in this grounded theory study was navigating conflicting value systems to promote health equity in public health. The process of navigating these tensions began with recognition that there was an ethical issue at play. This awareness, and the sense making and action that followed, was contingent on the degree to which an individual had developed critical PH consciousness. The recognition of ethical issues in PH practice spanned the dominant health system values of a biomedical agenda, systems driven care, systemic stigma and discrimination, and surveillance and control. These values did not align with those of the PH practitioner, which included health equity, situational care, respect for persons, and choice and relational autonomy [ 4 ]. Practitioners often had an emotional response to this misalignment, frequently interpreted as an ethical tension or a sense of moral distress. They made sense of the ethical issue through internal and collective reasoning processes, and shifted to action including advocacy through engaging with the system and encouraging participation of people experiencing inequities. The overall impact of navigating conflicting value systems was one of living in dissonance, often caught between what they knew they ought to be doing and what they were expected to do.
The moral foundation of PH practice has been described as determining the balance between what PH is and what PH practitioners think it should be [ 39 ]. In this study, participants demonstrated their moral foundation and ethical awareness through language that aligned with the concept of critical PH consciousness (CPHC), based on Freire’s [ 40 , 41 ] framework of critical consciousness. Freire [ 40 ] posited that learners who connect with their personal, intellectual, and emotional experiences can discuss them with others, resulting in a reflective reading of the world (or conscientization), concentrating on changing societally embedded inequities. Participants in this study varied in the extent to which they demonstrated CPHC. Some PH practitioners expressed a high degree of CPHC, citing a full range of ethical issues encountered in doing health equity work spanning multiple contexts. The depth of reflection on these situations was moving and motivating. Their personal reflections included the identification and processing of emotional responses which contributed to making sense of the situation. Those demonstrating a high degree of CPHC were relentless advocates and did whatever they could to meet the client’s needs, even when it meant circumventing rules and system limitations. Other PH practitioners were less aware of the broad range of ethical issues related to health equity in their work, thus expressing less of a CPHC and holding a more restricted idea of what they viewed as an ethical issue. The degree to which participants held a CPHC was integral to the kind of impacts they identified clients as experiencing, as well as impacts on themselves and others. It also subsequently expanded or limited the possibilities for action that they considered. However, a high degree of CPHC was noted to make them more vulnerable to experiencing moral distress and thus burnout.
PH practitioners’ conceptions of ‘doing good’ did not come solely from abstraction or theory. It appeared that their obligation to act arose from their situated position proximal to service users’ lived experience. We noted that participants with limited direct exposure to lived experiences of marginalization and less awareness of and commitment to equity and social justice were less likely to see inequities as structural and more likely to locate responsibility for inequities within the individual and their behaviour or lifestyle. PH practitioners that had a critical socio-structural understanding of health issues were more likely to have had experience working with marginalized populations or in some cases had their own lived experience of or identification with issues including substance use and mental health. Thus, the capacity to develop CPHC seemed to have proximity, dose, and exposure dimensions.
Practitioners routinely experienced ethical concerns resulting from their daily encounters with clients, yet had few organizational resources available to support their ethical decision making. While there may be ethics consultation support in healthcare organizations, this support was often geared toward individual and biomedical issues with few supports for PH practitioners grappling with everyday ethics in their practice. Ethical framework resources are needed and may be useful to guide reflection in practice. However, traditional biomedical frameworks will not capture such tensions around health equity. New frameworks are needed that specifically reflect PH values. Lee [ 38 ] suggests that even if the PH ethics field has not yet come to a place of agreement about a unifying theory, framework, or set of principles, there is still an immediate need for practice-oriented tools for recognizing ethical dilemmas and supporting consistent and defensible ethical decision making.
Providing time for critical reflection and dialogue is another essential resource in practice and in education to support PH practitioners to develop their CPHC, process their emotional responses, and problem solve ethical challenges. Ethical dialogue with a supportive practice team could serve to both decrease moral distress and facilitate development of CPHC. Hamric and Wocial [ 42 ] describes the creation of moral spaces and development of moral communities to facilitate interprofessional dialogue. Combined with decision making tools or frameworks, this reflection and dialogue can serve to not only alleviate moral distress, but also create avenues for collective social justice action.
Ortmann et al. [ 43 ] suggest that because public health itself is practical, pragmatic, and community oriented, ethical frameworks to guide public health practice must then be culturally, socially and politically aligned, and grounded in the public health values of health equity and social justice. However, the commitment to health equity and social justice has become difficult to sustain for many Canadian PH practitioners over the last two decades as health systems have shifted to corporate models of service delivery and as practice has increasingly become controlled [ 44 , 45 , 46 ]. It appears that in the face of these challenges, PH practitioners felt they had less support for responding to inequities, meeting the unique needs of individuals, or advocating for systemic concerns. Thus, when participants recognized and made sense of ethical issues and then took action on health inequities, they were demonstrating their own professional commitments to social justice rather than enacting organizational commitments to health equity. In other work, we have identified that health equity is often a value in name only and one held by individual practitioners and leaders but not necessarily organizations [ 47 ].
Some participants suggested that the current health and political environment in general is hostile to working toward social change, resulting in some PH practitioners going underground in the form of finding ways to work around the system to attempt advocacy and achieve what they feel is best for the client. “Workarounds”, known as strategies that differ from prescribed procedures taken to temporarily fix or circumvent problems, develop when the conditions and pressures of work in complex systems meet the structural constraints of these systems [ 48 ]. Berlinger has characterized workarounds as ethically significant as they emerge from the tension that arises when complying with rules is impossible to reconcile with the demands of work [ 49 ]. From a complex systems perspective, they reveal the incommensurability between professional values and the demands of health care organizations as workplaces under pressure [ 49 ]. Although advocacy is clearly identified as a PH competency it was felt to be often negated or not encouraged in health care systems, even in PH systems that philosophically should be oriented this way [ 50 , 51 ]. Cohen and Marshall [ 52 ], in their scoping review of public health advocacy, found that the literature reflected a neoliberal preoccupation with individual responsibilities for health, thus reproducing rather than resisting corporate politics.
In addition to advocacy, the Core Competencies for Public Health Practice in Canada [ 51 ] are grounded in the fundamental values of health equity and social justice with an assumption that all health professionals share and can operationalize these values, despite differences in identity, social location, and cultural background among practitioners themselves. Furthermore, PH practitioners who are more engaged with traditional epidemiology and virology, may embrace biomedical ethics more than those whose work is in social epidemiology [ 53 ]. Alternatively, PH practitioners have clear real-life commitments to social justice and health equity, and may therefore have had greater opportunity to develop CPHC and have the capabilities for enacting or doing social change.
Overall, the process of navigating conflicting value systems required PH practitioners to have a high level of ethical awareness to understand the systemic challenges of complex healthcare delivery, as well as address the societal challenges of stigma and discrimination that accompanied mental health and substance use concerns. In this study, participants articulated the distress and high emotional costs that came with this awareness. Similar to other research on moral distress in health, they expressed frustration and powerlessness [ 54 , 55 ]. Unintended consequences for the PH practitioner of not resolving these tensions may include disenfranchisement, disengagement, attrition, decreased quality of care, and reduced population health impacts [ 54 , 55 ].
The participants in this study, whose practice focused on promoting mental health and reducing the harms of substance use, were for the most part clearly committed to equity and social justice and had developed the ability to vision and effect social change in a strategic way. However, they did not appear to draw on a shared language or coherent theory or framework to identify, make sense of and act on the ethically challenging situations they faced in their work. Additionally, the organizations and systems within which they worked were usually not designed or resourced to support the work of social change. Beyond inclusion of concepts such as advocacy in core competency frameworks, explicit ethical guidance for PH, in particular at the direct care level, is lacking [ 50 , 51 , 56 , 57 , 58 ]. The resources that are available tend to be framed around the biomedical concepts of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice [ 17 ]. Although health equity and social justice are core values of public health, there is not yet consensus on a practice-oriented ethical framework that integrates these differences into guidance for decision-making guidance [ 59 ].
Health equity work is not an abstraction for PH practitioners as they have acquired experiential knowledge about the messiness, challenges, and successes of this work, especially in the fields of mental health and substance use. For example, although there is a wealth of research that has exposed the systemic stigma in acute health care settings and the ways in which health care providers are complicit in reinforcing stigma, there is still little evidence available on how PH practitioners navigate systemic stigma [ 60 , 61 ]. An increased focus on understanding the ethical issues and working collaboratively and reflexively to address the complexity of equity work has the potential to generate new solutions and/or strengthen equity strategies.
A key strength of this study was that participant experiences reflected a wide range of organizational and geographical contexts across the Canadian province of British Columbia. Conversely, British Columbia represents one specific provincial political and economic healthcare jurisdictional perspective, so findings will need careful consideration when being translated to different contexts. Ethical issues were limited to those identified related to mental health promotion and prevention of harms of substance use practice. While these are two practice areas generate substantial ethical concerns in part due to the stigma and discrimination associated with these issues, it is important to recognize that ethical issues and trade offs will manifest differently in different areas of public health. Furthermore, these findings reflect the experiences of a mostly female, mental health and substance use-oriented public health workforce. While this grounded theory may hold promise for application across the many functions of PH, it is unlikely that any one PH ethics framework will be applicable across all PH ethical challenges. We recommend future research to study the applicability of this grounded theory across the diverse PH core functions and the specialized practitioners associated with these functions.
Enacting PH values is vital when working in areas where reducing health inequities is the goal. Lee and Zarowsky [ 39 ] suggest that because these values differ from those of biomedicine, the processes and tools that are needed to make ethically-supported decisions also need to differ. We have aimed to contribute to the understanding of how PH practitioners, through promotion of and commitment to health equity, negotiate and advocate within health and social systems to assist clients in meeting their needs related to the social determinants as well as advocate for inclusion of their voice within health systems. Kass [ 14 ] states that “public health ethics is, ultimately, a practical field” (p. 239). The PH practitioner who values collectivism and solidarity, and is working toward social justice, is one who is more likely to experience ethical tensions and dissonance in their practice. They may benefit from an ethical framework that can guide them in their everyday practice, firmly grounded in the core values of PH.
This study also contributes to knowledge of how health care providers in PH are finding ways to empower themselves. However, while health systems may purport to hold goals of health equity, valuing health equity, and taking action to promote it remain challenging [ 62 ]. These findings point to the need for organizational strategies and supports that are attentive to listening and seeing moral distress as an opportunity for systems reform specifically related to promoting health equity in organizations. Health equity is, after all, a stated goal of health systems as well as public health [ 63 ].
The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to the sensitive and confidential nature of the data.
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We gratefully acknowledge the participants who contributed their insights and perspectives to this research as well as our provincial and national research partners. We acknowledge with deep respect that this research was conducted on the unceded territories of multiple First Nations across British Columbia.
The ELPH project was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Operating Grant: Programmatic Grants to Tackle Health and Health Equity, through the CIHR Institutes of Aboriginal Health and Institutes of Population and Public Health (FRN 116688) and the Public Health Agency of Canada. During the time of this research: Marjorie MacDonald was supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Applied Public Health Chair Award (FRN# 92365); Bernie Pauly has been funded by Island Health as the Island Health Scholar in Residence since July 2016. Funding bodies had no role in the design of the study, collection, analysis, or interpretation of data, nor in writing the manuscript.
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BP and MM designed the overall study. BP, MM, LM, WM, TR were involved in conducting interviews and analysis. KE, BP, MM, LM, WM, and TR engaged in interpreting the analysis to conceptualize the grounded theory. LM drafted the manuscript and KE, MM, LM, WM, and TR provided feedback on the manuscript and read and approved the final manuscript.
Correspondence to Wanda Martin .
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This study received ethical approval from the University of Victoria, University of Saskatchewan (REB# H11-03359) and reviewed and approved by UBC Behavioral Research Ethics Board (includes the Provincial Health Services Authority), Northern Health Authority, Interior Health Authority, Fraser Health Authority, and Vancouver Island Health Authority. The "Board of Record" is the Research Ethics Board delegated by the participating REBs involved in a harmonized study to facilitate the ethics review and approval process. Written consent was obtained from study participants. All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations.
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Marcellus, L., Pauly, B., Martin, W. et al. Navigating conflicting value systems: a grounded theory of the process of public health equity work in the context of mental health promotion and prevention of harms of substance use. BMC Public Health 22 , 210 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-12627-w
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2F Use problem-solving techniques when exposed to competing value systems. When beliefs and value systems differ, there is the potential for conflict and misunderstanding. When this does occur, it is important to know how to deal with conflict that may arise and to use problem-solving techniques to ensure any issues are dealt with.
The Competing Values Framework (CVF) emerged over twenty-five years ago. during research about organizational effectiveness and organizational. culture and has since been validated by numerous studies. The concept of. "organizational effectiveness" is deceptively simple to understand. How do. we know if one organization is more effective ...
RANK the values or ethical principles which - in your professional judgment - are most relevant to the issue or dilemma. What reasons can you provide for prioritizing one competing value/principle over another?
This framework reveals when, how, and why is important to think about values when solving problems. A consistent process fosters cohesive and creative value-based thinking during problem solving rather than teaching specific values.
In this blog post, we will go over the art of effective problem-solving step by step. You will learn how to define a problem, gather information, assess alternatives, and implement a solution, all while honing your critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills.
How to Resolve a Values Conflict. Assume one of your top values is Accountability. When your decisions and behaviors support this value, there is a sense of satisfaction, peace, and fulfillment. For example, saying to your boss, " The project we discussed is now complete, and within the promised timeframe. But what happens when you feel ...
Second, it is a tion to think of MSS as systems that just provide managers with information. are systems that should support managerial cognition and behavior. Third, tiveness is a critical construct in Information Systems (IS) research and Our approach is based on the competing values model (CVM) which has an tiveness perspective.
The problem solving process typically includes: Pinpointing what's broken by gathering data and consulting with team members. Figuring out why it's not working by mapping out and troubleshooting the problem. Deciding on the most effective way to fix it by brainstorming and then implementing a solution. While skills like active listening ...
Disruption means problem solving skills are more important than ever in today's workforce. Here are the problem solving techniques you need to know.
To truly understand a problem and develop appropriate solutions, you will want to follow a solid process, follow the necessary problem solving steps, and bring all of your problem solving skills to the table. We'll forst look at what problem solving strategies you can employ with your team when looking for a way to approach the process.
Effective problem solving is critical for success. Learn the necessary skills, best practices, and creative techniques to identify causes and solutions.
By learning from other organizations through examples of Competing Values Framework, a leader can change their management style if they wish to. Learning different management styles and analytical tools will help any organization move forward. In Harappa's High Performing Leaders program, mid-career professionals can refresh their knowledge ...
The competing values framework was created by Robert Quinn and John Rohrbaugh, emerging from research into the major characteristics of effective organizations. The competing values framework is a tool used to understand and characterize organizational behaviors and beliefs and how they contribute to success.
Problem solving is a key competency for the twenty-first century with its increasing complexity in many areas of life. This requires a new type of problem solving that involves a high degree of systems thinking, taking into account connectedness, complex dynamics and sometimes also fragility of the systems we live with. In recent years a shift away from well-defined analytical forms of problem ...
In this study, to address this basic social problem, participants engaged in the basic social process of navigating conflicting value systems in their health equity work in public health (Fig. 1).
Problem-solving is an important skill both in the workplace and in your personal life. When you encounter problems. As a result competing value systems, it is important that you develop the skills and techniques to resolve the issue.
2.5 Recognise own personal values and attitudes and take into account to ensure non-judgemental practice 2.6 Use effective problem solving techniques when exposed to competing value systems 2.7 Recognise unethical conduct and report to an appropriate person 2.8 Recognise potential and actual conflicts of interest Element 3: Contribute to
Section 3.6 Resolving ethical dilemmas or problems. All professional ethical codes and guidelines are based on respect for the client, care and protection for the client where required and appropriate behaviour towards the client at all times. Be very clear on the ethical guidelines of your particular profession (eg. welfare work).
PDF | On Feb 17, 2021, Ali Zeb and others published The competing value framework model of organizational culture, innovation and performance | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ...
Problem Solving with Competing Value Systems: When faced with competing value systems, it's crucial to remain impartial and focused on the client's needs. This might involve mediating conflicts, seeking compromise, or finding creative solutions that respect all parties' values.
Corporate culture can affect everything within an organization, and yet it's often hard to describe. Find out how to categorize your organization, and how you can use your analysis to promote and manage change.
Summarise three techniques which staff members could use to help them solve problems arising from having to deal with competing value systems. What is your answer so far or What have you done so far as an attempt to solve this question?
Skills: Proficiency in Google Suite (Docs, Sheets, Slides). Strong experience in web management and content management systems. Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Exceptional organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple tasks simultaneously. Strong problem-solving skills with a proactive approach. Attributes:
Provide an example of competing value systems and how you would use effective problem-solving techniques? in age care center