Organizational culture of selected teaching hospitals of Tehran

Organizational culture affects hospital performance. This study aimed to assess organizational culture of selected teaching hospitals of Tehran in 2014.
Material and This descriptive and cross sectional study was carried out in 7 teaching hospitals. Hospitals were selected out of 43 teaching hospitals using quota- randomized sampling method. A questionnaire with 32 questions was used to measure organizational culture of hospitals in 8 domains including attention to details, customer-oriented, team working, creativity and innovation, risk taking, integration (Coherence), power distance and short/long- oriented. About 308 employees working in clinical, diagnostic, administrative, and logistic departments participated in this study. Data were analyzed using SPSS software (version 20) through U Man- Whitney and Kruskal- Wallis statistical tests. Ethical issues such as informed consent, confidentiality of information and researchers’ objectivity were all considered.
The mean score of organizational culture was 3.57 out of 6 (moderate). The most and least scores were observed in attention to details (4.48) and risk taking (3.18) dimensions of organizational culture, respectively. The highest score of organizational culture was related to administrative units. Curative wards in hospitals got the lowest scores. There was a significant relationship between organizational culture and the type of hospital (p The findings of this study indicate a moderate organizational culture in selected hospitals.Given the importance of corporate culture in the success of the hospitals and improving patient outcomes, hospital managers should take appropriate actions to improve organizational culture, especially in terms of team-working, innovation, risk-taking and coherence.