DETERMINANTS OF INTERORGANIZATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS AMONG CANADIAN ACUTE CARE HOSPITALS.

Organizational, environmental, and CEO characteristics were examined as predictors of propensity to engage in interorganizational relationships and actual interorganizational outcomes. Results of a national study of Canadian hospitals suggest that propensity to engage in IOR is best predicted by perceptions of performance and competition, and actual interorganizational outcomes are best predicted by size, CEO characteristics, and market share. It is now well recognized that interorganizational relationships (IORs) are a mainstay of North American health services systems. In the U.S. and Canada, hospitals are increasingly engaging in complex IORs with other organizations and groups. It has been suggested that an increasingly competitive and financially constrained environment has led hospitals to engage in IORs. Canada's hospitals are largely protected from issues of survival and competition. Recent evidence, however, suggests that Canadian hospitals face an increasingly competitive environment (Fried, et al., 1989). In this paper we examine a range of factors associated with IORs among Canadian hospitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]