Melhoria da qualidade e performance operacional: o impacto da excelência gerencial no cooperativismo do ramo de saúde na Paraíba

Abstract

The central research question of this thesis is as follows: considering that the pursuit of organizational excellence is a necessary condition for the success of health organizations within their business ecosystems, and that organizational culture plays a significant role in this trajectory, how are the organizational and managerial practices that promote excellence in health cooperatives configured? The thesis argues that, within the context of Brazil’s supplementary health sector, cooperatives that achieve high levels of performance are those that adopt managerial practices aligned with the Evidence-Based Management (EBM) paradigm and develop a data-driven organizational culture. It is proposed that EBM and a culture of data are the most effective differentiators for superior-performing health cooperatives. The thesis is structured into five chapters. Chapter one presents the introduction, research context, justification, objectives, and overall structure of the study. The second chapter, written as a theoretical essay, discusses the health business ecosystem and the key challenges faced by

health cooperatives, proposing EBM as an integrative perspective to overcome the “arch- challenge” of cultivating a data culture. The third chapter describes an empirical study with

health cooperatives in the state of Paraíba, comparing pairs of organizations classified as "visionary" and "comparison" based on adapted criteria from the literature, focusing on the managerial practices influencing organizational performance. The fourth chapter, also empirical in nature, presents an in-depth case study of Unimed Belo Horizonte, nationally recognized as a model of excellence, in which specific and replicable managerial practices are identified. Finally, the fifth chapter presents the final considerations, highlighting the theoretical and practical contributions of the study, its limitations, and suggestions for future research.