System Models of Organizational Behavior Organizational Culture from a Complex Dynamic Systems Perspective: Moving from Metaphor to Action in Healthcare

As noted by Boan and Funderburk (2003), people in healthcare organizations work, relate, and interact in ways that are guided by the norms of their organization, their professions, and the healthcare industry as a whole. Organizational culture is often called upon as a descriptive, organizing and/or explanatory construct to characterize the shared beliefs, perceptions, expectations, norms and acceptable behaviors of individuals as they interact within and between the various groups and organizations that they represent. The construct has been linked in the literature to various aspects of organizational performance including profitability, quality, customer and employee satisfaction, safety, and innovation (e.g., Clarke, 2002; Denison, 1984; Fisher & Alford, 2000; Hodges & Hernandez, 1999; Mechanic, 2002; Shortell et al., 2000). Management models that draw inspiration from the literature on complex adaptive systems suggest that the cultures that support successful transformational enterprises could be the result of a combination of individual and organizational learning coupled with evolutionary processes (e.g., Axelrod and Cohen, 2000; Bar-Yam, 1997; Baskin, 2000), but specific strategies to change organizational cultures in a positive manner are less well documented.