Organizational culture: its impact on employee relations and discipline in health care organizations

Organizations need to examine their cultures at the level of the "shop floor"--in health care, the point where health care workers deal with patients--to determine if the culture is consistent with management policies and will permit an effective program of reward and discipline. This article describes a case where organizational culture was a major imperative in the outcome of an arbitration case. Discussed is a shop-floor situation in manufacturing holding implications for health care, a setting in which management, by countenancing counterproductive aspects of the culture, made it impossible to apply discipline as needed. The conclusion is that health care organizations that neglect the detrimental elements of their culture may find themselves not only at risk of poor employee relations, but also unable to apply discipline effectively.