Health care industry, customer orientation and organizational innovation : A survey of Chinese hospital professionals

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the strategy of market orientation and organizational innovation. Design/methodology/approach – This research adopted a cross‐sectional study using questionnaires to gather research data. Research subjects were presidents and high‐level managers at 491 hospitals, at the level of district hospital or above, in Taiwan. Questionnaires were distributed and 104 valid questionnaires were retrieved, resulting in a response rate of 21.18 per cent. Findings – The results demonstrated that the strategy of market orientation is positively correlated with organizational innovation; the strategies of customer orientation, competitor orientation, and inter‐functional coordination have a positive correlation with technical innovation. Practical implications – The results of this study provide hospital administrators with a practical method for developing a useful management strategy in order to improve service quality for customers. Originality/value – The majority of studies on market orientation and innovation have focused primarily on business organizations, particularly western businesses, and not on non‐profit organizations and Chinese businesses. However, the goal of non‐profit organizations when restructuring or improving their management processes is not the pursuit of profit; rather, they engage in these innovative activities in order to boost organizational performance. This study selected Taiwanese hospitals as the research target for the study of non‐profit organizations, and offers an in‐depth discussion.