Culture In Health Care

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There are many variables and factors that make up a culture of a healthcare organization, culture has a strong impact since it is related to organizational healthcare performance. Some studies have suggested that culture might be an important factor associated with the effectiveness of a wide variety of organizations across a range of sectors besides healthcare (Li). The health care cultures that “emphasize group affiliation, teamwork, and coordination have been associated with greater implementation of continuous quality”, improving with training and higher functional health statuses (Shortell). And organizational cultures that emphasize formal structures, regulations and reporting relationships with a weak culture appear to be negatively …show more content…
Thus managers allow for subcultures to be unique to each department since each has to develop their own individual subcultures. Each individual subculture has its own unique set of characteristics making it distinguishable from the other subcultures, but together, they still operate as a whole striving for the same overall goals. Culture is an emergent property of healthcare organizations and there are different contributing factors to its development. Strong leadership is one contributing factor which acts as a "organizational glue" and helps develop a strong connected culture under a manager's sphere of influence. Since ceremonies, symbols, rituals, activities, stories and legends are not only emergent properties of culture but also are tools for the survival and development of any culture. Strong cultures will have an abundance of these and may be easily visible or hidden to outsiders. However, an outsider may or may not be able to identify these elements of culture. And sometimes, the members within a culture may not be aware of some of its "elements" or distinguishing traits since it’s become natural for them. These sub cultural differences exist because of the differences between tasks, expertise and professions within each department. For example, if an employee is transferred from one department to another, they will most likely find that it is almost …show more content…
It’s due to the fact that an organization’s culture comprises an intertwining set of goals, roles to determine how to behave, communicate and what to value. The most productive success strategy is to begin with “leadership tools, including a vision or story of the future, cement the change in place with management tools, such as role definitions, measurement and control systems, and use the pure power tools of coercion and punishments as a last resort, when all else fails” (Denning). Managers have to effectively communicative a core cultural mandate. When an organization says they want to provide “the best health care services in New Jersey”, managers have to expand on the organization’s mission statement and explain how their department will help achieve this goal through their sub cultural relationships and behaviors. Managers then have to develop a cultural language to reinforce the core cultural mandate through words, verbs and nouns that can best reflect the mandate. They can’t always use the same mandate over and over again but they can use different words to convey the heart of the culture and them. If managers want their employees and department to own their culture, they have to show an example by acting in a manner that shows others that they live by the culture. Managers are always reminded how important it is to practice what you preach. And such is the case with
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