Assessing Organizational Culture 1
Running head: ASSESSING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
Assessing Organizational Culture
BADM 6123, Master in Business Administration – Health Care
Southern Nazarene University
Dr. Liesa Persaud
Rick Lawrence
March 31, 2012
Assessing Organizational Culture 2 Almost every organization, whether public or private, on paper or in practice, has a culture that fairly dictates its everyday functioning. The term culture has many
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The medical field brings together a vast array of individuals from different backgrounds and cultures. But once they become a doctor, hospital nurse, surgical technician, etc., they take on a new life and thereby absorb a new culture into their lives. Subcultures, as defined by organizational theorists John van Maanen and Stephen Barley, are “a subset of an organization’s members who interact regularly with one another, identify themselves as a distinct group…and routinely take action on the basis of collective understandings unique to the group” (Cheney, 2011, 78-79)
The organizational culture in a hospital is based on the premise that the hospital is there to provide a place for the care and healing of the sick or injured. Organizational theorist Mary Jo Hatch puts forth that there are five (5) “Degrees of Cultural Integration and Differentiation” (Cheney, 77) identified as follows: Unitary, Diverse (Integrated), Diverse (Differentiated), Diverse (Fragmented) and Disorganized (Multi-cephalous) (Hatch, 1997, 210). A hospital in its purest form would be well represented as a Unitary culture because the staff as a whole all have the same values or beliefs. But individual staff or even medical units may fall into any of the other cultures identified as well. A particular unit, i.e. a cardiac telemetry floor, may be a Diverse (Fragmented) unit due to a group of nurses who do not view their critical task requirements in the same way and as a
Culture is an observable, powerful force in any organization. “Made up of its members’ shared values, beliefs, symbols, and behaviors, culture guides individual decisions and actions at the unconscious level. As a result, it can have a potent effect on a company’s well-being and success” (One Page, n.d.).
“Culture consists of the symbols, rituals, language, and social dramas that highlight organizational life, including myths, stories, and jargon. It includes the shared meanings associated with the symbols, rituals, and language. Culture combines the philosophy of the firm with beliefs, expectations, and values shared by members. It contains the stories and myths about the company's founder and its current leading figures. Organizational culture consists of a set of shared meanings and values held by a set of members in an organization that distinguish the organization from other organizations. An organization's culture determines how it perceives and reacts to the larger environment (Becker, 1982; Schein, 1996). Culture determines the nature
Culture is a system of beliefs that are shared and communicated within a certain group of people, along with behavioral expectations and values that provide a framework to live by. No two people practice culture the exact same way. In the healthcare setting, especially in the United States, nurses and other healthcare workers are exposed to many different cultures. Being a culturally competent nurse ensures that individuals, families, and different groups of society get customized care that is well planned and implemented (Taylor, Lillis, & Lynn, 2015).
We live in a very diverse nation and overcoming challenges related to cultural beliefs and preferences is a very common obstacle for health care workers today. In an article in The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing cultural diversity is defined as being more than just race,
Culture includes the customs, traditions, ideas, and ways of interacting with the environment that often differ in various parts of the world. Over the last several decades in the U.S. there has been a growing awareness and tolerance of cultures other than the traditional western culture in the community. And in healthcare we are expected to provide all patients and families with the same respect and treatment, but at the same time provide individualized care. In order to meet these standards the work place environment has responded with training and education on cultural competence. The term cultural competence can be defined by the ability to respect and understand the beliefs and attitudes of
All Organisations posses a distinct form of culture with some having more than a single culture. This culture is usually very difficult to measure, change and most especially change.
Excellent points, did you know that cultural competence and patient centeredness are approaches to improving healthcare value that has been endorsed extensively in recent years. In this paper, we explore the past evolution of both cultural competence and patient centeredness. In doing so, we establish that early conceptual models of cultural competence and patient centeredness focused on how healthcare workers and patients might interact at the interpersonal level and that later theoretical models were expanded to consider how patients might be treated by the healthcare organization as a whole. We then compare theoretical models for both cultural competence and patient centeredness at both the interpersonal and health system levels to
Healthcare, ever changing, has advanced to an era of progression in which it is becoming more and more common for radical change in all varieties of aspects of the process within which the health care system runs to occur. For many of us, there is the ever so present idea that constant change is necessary not only to stay competitive in regards to any other competitors in the same field of service, but also to also provide groundbreaking and innovative equalized opportunities and treatment of all. As modern day society becomes increasingly aware and active on the topic of equality, it is important for health care providers to remember that it is essential for there to be diversity within the culture imbedded in healthcare delivery systems. Many of the reasons that make the issue of culture a topic worth mentioning include, but are not limited to, the potential positive and/or negative impacts culture and diversity can have on the healthcare delivery system, the importance in staying up to date and staying competitive with other healthcare systems, and the internal factors that have a hold in the change of culture and whether or not it can be successfully maintained within the health care organization. As stated by B.E. Smith’s article Leadership Diversity: The Path to Value-Based Care, “Increasing the racial, ethnic, gender and generational diversity of health care leadership is essential for the provision of culturally competent,
The current organizational culture type of my organization is Clan, based on the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument. Schein’s Three-Layer Organizational Model has three levels: artifacts, adopted behaviors and basic assumptions. Artifacts are made up of things that can be seen and felt. My organization has a relaxed dress code, which is considered a normal value for our organization. The office is in our family home, which provides a warm and welcoming atmosphere. We have several special dinners each year to celebrate our business. Outsiders would easily recognize these artifacts, and therefore these artifacts are a part of the work culture of my organization.
I applied the Organizational Cultural Inventory (OCI) with the intention that it is a fictional company, J Enterprises. It will be assumed that it is one of the largest financial services companies in the world. The main emphasis of the responses comes from the department in which I work. However, the results could be indicative of the entire company.
In today’s dynamic business environment leadership must understand the value and importance of their organizations’ culture. While it may never be formally defined, leadership must have a vision of their intended culture and a plan for creating and maintaining it. This vision will serve as the potter’s clay that determines everything from the dress code to the organizational structure. This paper examines two methods organizations can choose to create and maintain a healthy culture.
For health care workers, cultural competency is important for obvious reasons. On a daily basis, healthcare professionals work with patients of a variety of cultures, and many work with team members who come from different cultures than their own. Medical and other healthcare professionals spend many years in school learning how and when to treat patients for giving symptoms, but teaching them to interact with patients currently falls on knowing the things that make up a person’s cultural identity. Cultural differences that exist between people, such as language, dress and traditions, and the way societies organize themselves, their conception of morality and religion, attitudes about illness and death and the way they interact with the environment. Cultural competence is important in health care because the patient outcome, patient readmissions, staff retention, and labor relations all determine the outcome of an organizations success. Diversity improves the effectiveness and productivity of the workforce. Disadvantages of ignoring cultural diversity can result in a loss of revenue for the business. Company growth will also be affected by ignoring cultural diversity. Steps an organization should take to face this challenge is to implement training that cover workforce diversities and keep an open dialogue among employees expressing concerns, differences, ideas, etc.
Edgar Schein, a famous theorists dealing with organizational culture, provides the following definition for the term: "A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems that has worked well enough to be considered valid and is passed on to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems." (organizationalculture101) However, organizational culture is more than sharing assumptions used by a group to solve problems; it is the combination of the points of view, ineffectual processes, education, backgrounds of all the staff which are part of an organization way of doing things. Corporation culture should uncover from the board of the directors to the rest of
The shared characteristics and, in some cases, perception of employees create what is known as organizational culture. A strong culture constructs a unified employee atmosphere, whereas a weak culture lacks a shared sense of distinction between employees. An employee’s heritage or individual culture, although different than, affects the overall organizational culture of companies. Like society, sub-cultures exist within organizations. Formed by departmental function, geographical location, and/or the personalities of employees, sub-cultures include employees who continue to adhere to the organizations’ overall culture, but have additional independent characteristics. Employees’ individual heritage, along with the culture and
Often we as humans make assumptions of other cultures based on stereotypes and cliches However, we fail by relying on such narrow minded thinking. The nature of culture is very complex, and thus when observed requires a deeper understanding and awareness. These statements addressed by Erin Meyer truly resonated with me and my future self Looking into my future as a leader in the Healthcare field, I realized I need to become more culturally aware. The ever-changing work environment requires a leader who can lead across many cultures and use the differences that arise as an asset. In being a leader myself I will be exposed to multiple cultures and therefore must embrace the words of Brett “Avoid imposing single culture based approaches on