title: The critical success factor approach to strategic alignment: seeking a trail from a health organization's goals to its management information infrastructure.
abstract: The critical success factor (CSF) approach is a technique that will aid health administrators, planners and managers to identify, specify and sort among the most relevant and critical factors determining an organization's survival and success. Following a top-down management perspective, this paper discusses the CSF methodology as a strategic information management process comprising several important phases: (i) understanding the external factors such as the organization's industry, market and environment; (ii) achieving strong support and championship from top management; (iii) encouraging the proactive involvement of management and staff in generic CSF identification; (iv) educating and directing the participation of staff members in CSF verification and further refinement of generic CSFs into specific CSFs; and (v) aggregating, prioritizing and translating activity-related CSFs into organizational information requirements for the design of the organization's management information infrastructure. The implementation of this CSF approach is illustrated in the context of a British Columbia community hospital, with insights provided into key issues for future health researchers and practitioners.
authors.affiliation: Division of Health Policy and Management, University of British Columbia, Canada. josepht@unixg.ubc.ca
authors.forename: J K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Tan
mesh_terms: D001955:British Columbia; D002170:Canada; D006298:Health Services Administration / Q000592:standards*; D006302:Health Services Research / Q000379:methods; D006764:Hospitals, Community / Q000458:organization & administration; D019451:Information Management / Q000458:organization & administration*; D008330:Management Audit / Q000379:methods*; D009874:Operations Research; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D009937:Organizational Objectives; D010934:Planning Techniques; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care