Organisational culture literature

An outcome of a generalist approach is that cultures can be described with a limited number of aspects, e.g. dimensions, facets or factors. A unique culture approach does not have this common underlying framework and its descriptions are limited to single cultures. However, either approach can ultimately lead to a third approach, that is a typology of cultures. All three approaches are well represented in the organisational culture literature and can be discerned also in literature on safety culture. Again, this topic will be discussed more extensively below. 

Van Hoewijk, R. 1988. The meaning of organisational culture An overview of the literature (in Dutch). M O, Tijdschrift voor Organisatiekunde en Sociaal Beleid, 1, 4—46. 

In the literature organisational culture is defined as [a] pattern of shared assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration. .. [and is] taught to new members as a correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems (Schein 1992, see figure 1). 

The boundaries drawn between British and Dutch spheres in what the British called the Malay World were arbitrary. The peoples and histories in the space that came to be Malaysia were not fundamentally different from those that came to be Indonesia save for their more recent, immigrant quality. Indonesia had by far the more intractable assemblage of ethnies rooted in distinctive histories, languages and literatures. Yet it is Malaysia that has the complex federal system, while Indonesia remains, with China, the world s largest experiment in organising exceptional cultural diversity through a unitary state. 

A literature review shows that very few models of organisation (safety) culture exist. Whilst there are differing perspectives within the hroad definition of safety culture there appears to be general agreements... 

Defining what we mean by safety culture has taken up many of the pages of scientific articles and books in the last few decades. A recent round table involving experts, organised by the Healthcare Foundation in Mareh 2013, touched upon one of the thornier issues which was raised by a number of these articles, namely the culture vs climate debate (e.g. Schein 1984 Meams and Flin 1999). The definitions provided by the round table (Healthcare Foundation 2013 3) attempted to distinguish between the two, whilst noting that definitions vary within the research literature ... 

Based on the literature review, key dimensions of hospital patient safety culture were identified and items drafted to measure those dimensions. Items were written to obtain a staff-level perspeetive of the extent to which a hospital organisation s culture supports patient safety and event reporting. In addition, most of the items were foeused on the respondent s own work area or unit beeause unit-level eulture is more salient and relevant and has the most immediate influenee on staff attitudes and behaviors. Sinee eulture varies aeross units, it was important to foeus respondents on their own unit s eulture by asking them to identify and seleet their unit first and then answer the questions in the survey about that unit. However, some patient safety eulture issues cut across units, so the last part of the survey foeused specifically on hospital-wide patient safety eulture, ineluding handoffs and transitions, pereeptions of management support and teamwork aeross units. 

Mulder (1998) provides a list of the important attributes of an organisation which are vital in ereating and maintaining a good safety culture which can be seen as representative of most of the other attribute lists given in the literature. The list is as follows ... 

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