Coordinating organizations in health care management

Shortell & Kaluzy, Health Care Management, 6th Edition, Coordinating Organizations

Organizational culture can play a major part of mergers and alliances between two or more companies. As such, it is important to identify the factors that actually comprise an organization's culture. By isolating each of these factors, it becomes substantially easier to assess what sorts of issues, if any, might arise between a potential alliance between organizations. Additionally, an analysis of the five factors that comprise organizational culture can also indicate just how each organization may make adjustments to ameliorate any problems regarding its alliance that stem from differences in company culture. '

One of the most important factors that helps determine the type of culture an organization will have is its values. Quite simply, the ideas that people prioritize will greatly affect how a particular organization goes about pursuing its business objectives. Values are set at a couple of different levels. They are generally mandated by upper level management or owners. However, they are also implemented by supervisors and managers, and are also affected by the interpretation of the general employees or worker bees that actually perform the daily tasks necessary to stay in business. Values are a key part of organizational culture because they are an "expression of ethics which guide employees actions" -- which relates to how an organization does so business (Chapter 10, slide 13).

Another eminent factor in determining an organization's culture is its mission, which is typically succinctly stated in some type of mission statement. Missions play a more direct role in the forming of company culture than values do, because missions denote specifically the purpose of an organization and some basic facets of how it will attempt to fulfill that purpose. In this respect, missions generally refer to both tactical and strategic processes for the accomplishing of business objectives.

Another integral factor that contributes to a company's culture is its vision. A company's vision is part of its longer term goals. It pertains less to specific business objectives and more to organizational, enterprise, or even industry-wide objectives that it hopes to attain. A company's vision, therefore, serves as its direction for the future, and helps to guide it according to a plan that it has developed. Visions generally provide a point of challenge, as they involve forecasting a particular line of development that an enterprise would like to actualize. Naturally, visions are created in conjunction with a company's values and its mission statement, which is why they play substantial roles in the forming and establishing of a company's culture.