Human Resource Management - Its Impact on ... - Dental Asia

DENTALMANAGEMENTby Dr Fanny Young • Dr Ricky WongThe <strong>Impact</strong> of<strong>Human</strong> <strong>Resource</strong><strong>Management</strong> onBusiness Success ofDental PracticesThe aim of this project is to determine the associationbetween different <strong>Human</strong> <strong>Resource</strong> <strong>Management</strong>practices and business success in the dental practices inHong Kong. 200 dental practices were randomlychosen from the Dentist List. Anonymousquestionnaires containing sixteen questions were sentout to those dental practices and the number ofresponded questionnaires was 66. Based on thequestionnaires, the extent of each HRM Practice wascorrelated with the degree of business success. UsingSpearman Rank Correlation, Spearman r(s) wereranged from 0.6836 to 0.8203. In conclusion, HRMpractices were significantly correlated with businesssuccess in the dental practices in Hong Kong.In addition to be a clinician, dentists are having the role of manager in thedental practice. In his textbook on <strong>Management</strong>, Dessler (2004) stated “… it ispossible to do everything else right as a manager – lay brilliant plans, drawclear organization charts, set up modern assembly lines, and use sophisticatedaccounting controls – but still fail as a manager by hiring the wrong people or bynot motivating subordinates.” Similarly, in addition to having good clinicaltechnique and sympathetic patient care, good human resource management(HRM) skills are needed in order to ensure business success in a dental practice.Besides, nowadays dentistry is something more than giving treatments onpatients; it is also providing services to clients. These service jobs in dentalpractices require new types of “knowledge” workers, new HRM methods tomanage them, and a new focus on human capital (Moskowitz and Warwick 1996).Therefore, a study of different HRM practices and correlations among them withthe business success may identify which HRM practices may be more importantin contributing to the business success in dental practices.AimThe aim of this project is to determine the relationship between different HRM30 Dental Asia • March / April 2008