EP84 Organizational Cognition with Dr. Alden Lai

In this episode we are joined by Dr. Alden Lai, a management scholar who researches organizational cognition in health care and public health. He investigates the ways health care professionals and managers handle complex, ambiguous, or novel information at work, and how these processes contribute to the safety and quality performance of healthcare organizations. He also examines how people generate meaning and meaningfulness of work to understand issues on burnout, resilience, and workplace wellness. Some of his current research involves: futuristic thinking and the aversion of patient safety events; the psychological antecedents of meaning-making among primary care providers; and employee-employer value fit and job satisfaction of allied health professionals in team-based care models. Dr. Lai has an affiliated appointment in the Department of Management and Organizations at NYU Stern. Prior to joining the NYU faculty, Dr. Lai was involved in teaching executive education as well as graduate and undergraduate courses on health care leadership and management, patient safety, and quality improvement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Carey Business School. He currently teaches Public Health Management and Leadership. Dr. Lai has worked with universities, federal and state governments, health systems, and research foundations internationally. His professional experiences include being a management consultant, social enterprise strategist, and education research consultant. He was also the Novartis Visiting Fellow at Ho Chi Minh City Medicine & Pharmacy University (Vietnam), Visiting Fellow at Fukushima Medical University (Japan), Chair of the European Health Psychology Society's early career researcher division, and executive board member in the Academy of Management's Division of Health Care Management. To learn more about the NYU School of Global Public Health, and how our innovative programs are training the next generation of public health leaders, visit publichealth.nyu.edu.