Corporate cultures and business strategy: a health management company perspective

This article develops a framework of analysis for understanding corporate cultures, and applies available analytical tools to the cultural study of four health management organizations. A distillation of the relevant literature was performed to establish working definitions, tools of analysis, and various caveats. Examples of corporate cultural studies follow, and an attempt was made to identify the cultural dimensions, typology, and anticipated strategies for the four multis. The author emphasizes that healthcare companies which want sustained changes in their business lines must examine and carefully alter their firms' culture to support and reinforce such changes.