the association between philosophical thinking and demographic characteristics of hospital managers in isfahan university of medical sciences, iran

background: philosophical thinking is an activity that focuses on the mind, sensitivity, understanding and links between them. managers with philosophical thinking are able to make decisions for the entire organization. they make fewer errors and provide a balance between manpower and organization maintenance. such abilities can be influenced by demographic characteristics of the managers. the present paper aimed to examine the philosophical thinking of hospital managers as related with their demographic characteristics (type, management, gender). methods: this comparative study was conducted in 2010 on all senior, nursing and office managers in isfahan university of medical sciences, isfahan, iran. simple random sampling was used to select 5 hospitals from 11 educational hospitals affiliated to isfahan university of medical sciences. all managers of the selected hospitals were evaluated using census sampling (n = 80). data was collected by a researcher-made questionnaire of philosophical thinking which was designed according to the smith's model. independent t-test and analysis of variance (anova) were used for statistical analyses. results: our results showed the score of thinking in men and women to be respectively 74 and 71 out of 100. all three categories of managers scored almost the same in philosophical thinking. moreover, anova did not show a significant relation between philosophical thinking and academic degree (p > 0.05). conclusions: results of the present study suggested that scores of philosophical thinking of managers did not significantly relate with demographic characteristics. in fact, philosophical thinking is a skill which all people can possess.