PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATIONAL WISDOM IN THE HEALTH TOURISM INDUSTRY

Abstract

Health tourism is when patients travel to another state (or within a country) to improve or restore health (Hudson and Li, 2012). Recent studies show that health care spending is on the rise, averaging around 9 percent of GDP in OECD countries, and that the right balance needs to be struck between spending on disease prevention and treatment. Assessing the problem field of the health tourism industry and the current situation, the following key problems are identified: lack of communication and support between health tourism policy makers and health tourism organizations; lack of a culture of cooperation and organizational partnership between the public and private sectors; lack of strategic planning; gaps in the targeted distribution of responsibilities between actors in the health tourism network; resistance of the public and private sector to change. Thus, the article solves the problem – how to ensure the effective application of the principles of organizational wisdom in the health tourism industry? According to the authors, it is expedient for the organizations involved in this complex field of tourism to base their activities on the principles of organizational wisdom. The aim of the article is to propose the application of the principles of organizational wisdom in the health tourism industry. For the systematic review, scientific articles were searched in databases: Cambridge Journals Online; EBSCO; Emerald Publishing; SAGE Journals Online; Science direct; Taylor & Francis. The scientific articles included in the systematic review cover the period 1999-2020. The following methods are used to present the results of the research: comparative analysis, synthesis, graphical representation and generalization. The study identified the following essential principles of organizational wisdom that are appropriate to adapt in the health tourism industry: transformational leadership; organizational culture, management structure and teamwork; recognition of environmental change and rapid and effective response to it; systemic thinking; interaction between different organizations that can lead to high-quality solutions (innovation); the ability to accumulate organizational memory to compare past and present situations and decisions made. The authors in the article substantiate the opinion that the sustainability of the application of these principles depends on the mechanism of organizational partnership in organizing / creating health tourism cooperative. Such an organization has: a balanced structure and clearly defined roles and responsibilities of participants; long-term commitments are matched by specific short-term objectives that can be measured; periodic evaluation of the effectiveness of the role played by each partner; accurate and effective communication between partners and all stakeholders.