Leadership Challenges in Managing Healthcare Teams: A Qualitative Desk-Based Study of Private Hospitals in Myanmar

Abstract

This study examines the principal leadership challenges encountered in managing healthcare teams within private hospitals in Myanmar, employing a qualitative desk-based research design. Drawing on a systematic thematic analysis of peer-reviewed academic literature, institutional healthcare reports, and international organizational publications, the study identifies and interprets recurrent challenges that significantly impede effective healthcare leadership in resource-constrained and developmentally complex settings. The findings reveal that communication barriers, team coordination difficulties, decision-making pressures, rigid organizational hierarchies, and chronic resource constraints collectively constitute the defining challenges of healthcare leadership in Myanmar's private hospital sector. Analysis further demonstrates that transformational, participative, and situational leadership approaches generate the most constructive outcomes in terms of team performance, employee engagement, and service quality within these environments. The study is grounded in an integrated multi-theoretical framework incorporating Transformational Leadership Theory, Situational Leadership Theory, Path-Goal Theory, and Teamwork Effectiveness Theory, which together provide a coherent analytical basis for understanding how leadership behaviors interact with organizational structures, cultural conditions, and operational constraints to shape team functioning. The findings carry clear implications for healthcare managers, policymakers, and leadership development practitioners committed to strengthening health systems in developing country contexts. This study contributes a contextualized, developing-country perspective to an area of healthcare leadership scholarship that has disproportionately concentrated on Western, resource-rich institutional settings.