'Organisational culture' refers to the shared characteristics among people within the same organisation. These characteristics may include: beliefs, values, norms of behaviour, routines, traditions, and sense-making. In the last several years, great emphasis has been placed on changing both organisational culture and organisational structure to improve healthcare performance. While the management of organisational culture is increasingly viewed as a necessary part of health system reform, evidence from the research literature on the link between organisational culture and health performance is weak. Therefore, It is important for policymakers to review the effectiveness of strategies aiming to change organisational culture on healthcare performance.
This Cochrane review did not find any rigorous evidence to demonstrate the effect of strategies to change organisational culture on healthcare performance. There are examples (within the excluded studies) of researchers attempting to do this, but well designed studies are lacking.