The Relationship between Organizational Culture and Employees’ Work Attitudes in Hospitals in Greece

Abstract

Purpose: The volatile socioeconomic conditions that prevail in Greece, significantly affect the healthcare sector. The match of employees’ and organizational values is considered as the critical factor in determining the level of employees’ work attitudes, such as work engagement, job satisfaction, and job burnout. The more employees accept the organization’s values and beliefs, assumptions, the stronger the Organizational Culture is, and the more influence has on the employees’ work attitudes. Thus, Organizational Culture is recognized to be the essential tool to shape the employee’s behavior and work attitudes. This paper aims to explore the Organizational Culture that prevails on Hospitals in Greece and at what extent the organizational culture is related to employees' working attitudes as work engagement, job satisfaction and job burnout. It also analyses these elements of the Greek hospital culture that cause negative affect to employees' working attitudes and how this may change. Method: This study collected data from public healthcare organizations, using questionnaires which are reliable from other researches in order to verify the results. These questionnaires were used to examine the culture of the hospitals in Greece that prevails and at what extent this culture affects employees' working attitudes. It is analyzed the correlation between the variables by using the structural equation model SEM. Findings: In the specific research our results support that Organizational Culture cannot predict employees’ Work Engagement and Job Satisfaction. Organizational Culture significantly influences the level of employees’Job Burnout. From the SEM analysis, we indicate a good fit of the hypothesized model. The type of Organizational Culture that prevails in the Health sector in Greece is the Hierarchic type. Originality: This research emerges the importance of organizational culture and at what extent affects employees' working attitudes. It reveals which is the prevailing culture of the hospitals in Greece in the public sector. Also, it shows the specific characteristics of the culture that can be improved in order to affect positively employees' working attitudes.