No abstract

A Florida-based obstetrics and gynecology facility reported in February 2019 that they lost data because of a ransomware attack. In November 2017, 107,000 healthcare records were exposed from data breaches, and 340,000 records were exposed in December 2017. In 2019, 23,000 patient records at Critical Care, Pulmonary & Sleep Associates were compromised when a hacker gained access to an employee's email account and sent out phishing emails to the other employees, eventually exposing the patient data. On January 11, 2018, Adams Memorial Hospital and Hancock Regional Hospital, both in Indiana, experienced independent ransomware attacks, with Hancock Regional Hospital paying $50,000 in ransom. These incidents point to significant and complex cybersecurity risks for all healthcare organizations. Effectively managing these risks requires healthcare managers to develop system thinking and adaptive leadership skills. This paper explores the nuances and complexities around systems thinking in the healthcare cybersecurity environment.

New leaders are vital to organizational continuity as people retire, leave for other opportunities, or become promoted. New leaders face numerous challenges, but when comprehensive leadership development programs are not implemented in organizations to aid them in their new roles, new leaders can face numerous obstacles to effective decision-making, managing, and leading effectually and successfully. This article discusses the interconnected nature of organizational leadership, culture, structure, and systems, among other elements, and how they can be affected by certain conditions and behaviors as well as how they affect organizational outcomes. This includes leadership behaviors, structures, cultures, and subcultures that pre-date the arrival or promotion of new leaders and create conditions for leadership ineffectiveness due to leadership cloning and intra-organization tribalism in toxic leadership teams. These conditions create an ideal situation for potential systemscale organizational dysfunction.

Global crises that jolt entire systems, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can place groups, organizations, and communities in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments that affect all sectors of society, having potentially disastrous effects including high morbidity and mortality rates, political upheaval, and extensive disruption of entire economic systems, causing damage that can last for months or even years. Effective leadership is a pivotal organizational commodity in times of normalcy, and it becomes increasingly critical during crises and the subsequent environments of discontinuous change. There has been a consistent level of international criticism regarding national, state, local, and corporate leadership during the COVID-19 crisis. This chapter explores the leadership challenges associated with highly chaotic environments and introduces an advanced model of leadership—shock leadership—and leadership development framework necessary for higher leader reliability and effectiveness in disasters and other crises.