Nursing officers' role in shaping organisational culture.

Abstract

The phenomena of management practices and organisational culture (OC) are defined as the driving forces in the success or failure of an organisation. Today, nursing officers must demonstrate leadership behaviours or styles that are appropriate for the constantly changing, complex and turbulent health care delivery system. While many nursing officers do not deny the importance of organisational culture in employee satisfaction, quality of service and overall performance, few fail to realise the direct impact they have in shaping it. With the recent transition from the old general hospital to a state of the art general hospital as Mater Dei, apart from the structural changes it is assumed that cultural transformation has been wrought alongside to deliver improvements in quality and performance in nursing care. Data were collected from a randomly selected sample of both nurses (n = 350) and nursing officers (n = 35) working within in-patient wards. The Denison Organisational Culture Survey (DOCM) Instrument developed by Denison (1990) was used to measure organizational culture quantitatively. To strengthen the findings, several interviews were scheduled with twelve nursing officers based on the questionnaire to explore thoroughly their views about the current scenario within inpatient wards' culture. Statistical tests were carried out to analyse the quantitative data whilst content analysis was carried out on the qualitative data. Findings revealed that there is a consistent moderate level of an internal focused culture with a flexible approach among all inpatient wards. Similarities emerged in participants' scores within the five departmental cultures suggesting a predominant homogenous Involvement trait throughout inpatient wards. Results highlight important managerial implication towards cultural transformation. Moreover, the study confirms that literature showing that Involvement, Adaptability, Consistency and Mission traits are positively correlated to the effectiveness of healthcare organisations is also applicable and relevant in the local context. Several recommendations were set forward to the obtained findings.