Organizational culture in nursing schools in Turkey: faculty members' perspectives

Among the benefits of examining an organization's culture are the opportunity to understand the basic mechanisms of the institutional and structural procedures, to determine the need for change and to ensure the development and satisfaction of the faculty members.

To determine the perceptions of faculty members of organizational culture at nursing schools in Turkey and to examine different perceptions in relation to demographic variables.

The study was conducted with 180 faculty members from seven nursing schools in state universities located in different geographical regions of Turkey that granted permission for the study. All faculty members in these schools with at least 1 year of institutional experience were included in the research. No sampling was required. A demographic information form and an organizational culture scale were used as data collection materials. The organizational culture scale contains 30 items and resolves the organizational culture in three dimensions. The minimum score obtained was 1 and the maximum was 5.

The mean score for faculty members' in total scale was 3.40 (SD = 0.68), while it was 3.26 (SD = 0.77) for the management style dimension, 3.39 (SD = 0.73) for the organizational commitment/relations dimension and 3.68 (SD = 0.73) for the student-oriented dimension. There was no statistical difference between the perception of organizational culture and work experience at the institution, marital status or educational status, but there were differences in age, number of years in the profession and academic titles.

It was found that strong perceptions have been established in nursing schools in regard to student-oriented practices, and that groups consisting of senior academic personnel and experienced academicians are considered to be better at perceiving the importance of the organizational culture. The administrators are recommended to promote policies to enhance the participation in decision-making processes and regularly monitor the cultural changes in the organization.