The Influence of Leadership on Health Service Organizational Culture

This report delves into the critical relationship between leadership and organizational culture within healthcare settings. It begins by defining leadership and organizational culture, emphasizing how leadership profoundly influences an organization's values, behavior, and service delivery. The report highlights key leadership issues in health organizations, such as challenges in nurse recruitment, the impact of technology and innovation, cultural awareness, and employee engagement. It then explores contemporary leadership theories, particularly servant and transformational leadership, and examines research on safety culture within healthcare. The report discusses how leadership styles affect organizational culture and presents recommendations for fostering a positive and effective environment. These recommendations include promoting shared values, consistent leadership, staff engagement, patient-centered care, and honest reporting. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of patient-centered care, staff training, and clear communication to improve healthcare service quality.

Running head: LEADERSHIP EFFECTS ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
Leadership effects on organizational culture
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LEADERSHIP EFFECTS ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
Introduction
The face of an organization is portrayed by organization culture. This determines the
values of the organization on the perspective of its service delivery. The health organization is
much affected by organization culture due to the nature of the organization. According to Francis
(2013), He states that improving individual leadership is a way out to end the unfavorable
condition of the organization throughout the national health services. Promoting a common
culture that is not detrimental across all health organization. This would improve positive values
and change the way of doing things in all health organizations. This thesis will focus on the
effectiveness of leadership to improve organizational culture in a health organization.
Definition
Leadership plays a key role in health organization such as influencing, leading, guiding
motivating the team and making the decision. A leader must possess the right attribute of a
leader to be able to guide the organization effectively. The leader must be innovative to bring
changes in the organization and be good communicator and abilities to relate well with others in
the organization. They must also be honest to promote integrity in the organization (Vecchiotti,
2018).
Organizational culture
Organization culture, on the other hand, determines the organization expectation and
guides the expected individual behavior. These include the individual portrayed behavior within
the organization and the way individuals interact with the outside world. Organization culture
also includes the vision, values, and organizational norms. Organization culture exposes the

LEADERSHIP EFFECTS ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
organization image to the external world. It shows how things are done within a given
organization (FORGON, 2018).
Leadership issues in health organization
There are major challenges facing the current hospital leadership in services delivery due to
changing trends of culture and generations.
First, the recruitment of nurses has major challenges that need to be considered. The
increasing demand for the nurse has triggered the recruitment demand as the nurses keep on
shifting from one role to more advanced nursing roles. Also increased roles in nursing like
informatics nursing role and health practitioner roles have continued to fuel the nursing demand.
The leadership in health care ought to understand that there are different expectations in the
current generation of nurses than the old generation. The new generation wants a flexible
schedule, engagement, and appreciation from the health care organization leadership.
Understanding the new generation mindset can greatly impact health services since the
philosophy is totally different. The baby boomer lived to work while the new generation works
to live. The new generation of nurses has difficult in long hour shifts since they need more time
to be with their families and friends. Lack of flexible schedule can increase high rate of
absenteeism among the health workers for reason best known to them (Duncombe, 2019)..
Innovation and technology came as load reliever to enhance quick and effective service
delivery. Technologically managing health records and transmitting them to the health system
reduce the workload of the nurses which make it easier for new generation nurses to adapt to. It
also encourages retaining nurses due to reduced workload and effectiveness of service delivery.
Health management is faced with the high competition due to lack of investing in technology

LEADERSHIP EFFECTS ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
thus degrading the hospital inputs due to degraded service delivery. Also advocating new
technology makes it easier to provide health services quicker to the patient and encourages
nurses to be available at the bedside of the patients. This promotes effective service delivery and
attracts more patients in the health care thus increasing competition (Norton, 2019).
Improvement of cultural awareness is a factor to be discussed because it affects service
delivery. Racism in health sectors affects the performance of staff and recruitment of staff from
different culture. It also affects the sustainability of health workers due to the undermined
motivation and morale by their fellow workers, patients and the management Livingston, S.
(2018).
Migration of people from one region to another makes the patient come from a different
culture. Therefore learning basic concepts on cultural competency enhances service delivery to a
different patient. Health care management must also embrace the recruitment of health workers
from diverse society who speak different languages in order to promote effective services to
diverse cultures. The health care management and leadership need to pay attention to societies
and different cultures outside there. To improve cultural in health care, health care needs to
encourage people from different cultures to participate in the health professional to promote
better services in health care organizations (Andrew 2015).
Employee engagement affects how employees can be retained in the health organization.
Proper training on the health and safety of patients by the management can promote better
services and retaining bedside nurses. Recognizing people for their good work make them feel
like part of the big team. The healthcare organization leadership should ensure the new

LEADERSHIP EFFECTS ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
generation group of health workers participate in committee and in decision making which
makes them motivated and feels like part of the leadership.
Finally promoting self -care can boost the rate of service delivery among health workers
and individuals. Health workers should be encouraged on how to take care of themselves when
faced with psychological issues like stress. The management should promote technical skills on
how to relieve stress such as relaxation techniques, such as time to reflect, meditation room for
meditation and spiritual intervention by the priest.
Contemporary leadership theory
There are different types of leadership style that play various roles but in the health only
specific style of leadership can prove to be effective and give it advantages over the others.
Contemporary leadership style plays the role of servant leadership to enhance service
productivity (Chamberland, Montes, 2018). It is a transformation for of leadership where the
leader motivates the employees to achieve organizational goals. The transformation leadership
focuses on working together for the better good of the organization. These usually involve
coaching and mentoring the health worker to head different departments in the health
organization. This theory of leadership involves connecting and boosting the morale and
motivation for both the leader and the team in promoting better services in the health care. The
leadership style look forth into building positive connection between the employees and the
health management. It enhances or promotes change and builds good relationship among the
stakeholders in the healthcare.

LEADERSHIP EFFECTS ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
Research on safety culture
According to Brunetto, Y. (2019), promoting safety, culture is an effective way of
increasing value and effective service delivery. The research done at Staffordshire trust
suggested major issues affecting the health care such as patience negligence, poor health
standards in the hospital, lack of concern about the patients and caregivers, mistrust among the
employees and the hospital management and lack of effective feedback from the management
really affected the service delivery. The research was conducted to find out why the safety
culture in the organization was not upheld. The participant includes the hospital board meeting
with no participation of any outside the meeting (Francis, 2013)
Research finding
The finding resulted in a lack of concern to patients, reduced number of health workers,
diluted expertise skills which posed a great danger to the patients with no major consideration.
The hospital management focused on secondary issues rather than the issue affecting health
concerns. These issues affected the focus on the goal of health care and concern to promote
safety culture in the hospital.
Discussion on organization culture
The hospital management need to change the style of leadership by adapting to
contemporary style of leadership which prove to be affective in service delivery and promote
change in the health care. The change of leadership style will prevent major health problem
associated with ineffective management (Eagly 2017).

LEADERSHIP EFFECTS ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
To promote effective organization culture to impact change in the health organization
there are major factors that need to be adhered to by the organization leadership. The health
organization needs to have shared value from top management to the front line staff. Having
consistent leadership to motivate the staff and support the organizational objectives is a key role
of hospital leadership. Leaders need to have direct contact with the staff to reinforce or
strengthen organizational culture for the purpose of realizing the organization goals. The staff
should have a questioning attitude, good communication skills and a rigorous approach to the
problem. The team should learn from errors committed and should not abhor from errors. On
patient centeredness provide personal responsibility and that the individual staff should take
personal responsibilities to ensure the patient’s interest is put first to promote health standard of
health care. The report also provides the reward of the staff for the right attitude.
Better health standards prove that health care has the ability to provide better services.
These include safety measure to ensure that health care has a measure of disposing of health
hazardous equipment that may be harmful if badly disposed of. Lack of proper measure should
lead to the closure of health care for lack of proper necessities to run health care. This also
affects individual service delivery. The individual who provides poor services should have less
tolerance and should face consequences for their poor work while individual who provide
exceptional services should be recognized and rewarded by the management.
To promote honesty and integrity the report indicates that the patient outcome experience
and satisfaction should be available to the public and anyone who need such information. Also,
the patients should have access to information about the surgeon record of performance.
Recommendations

LEADERSHIP EFFECTS ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
To promote organizational culture in health care, Francis recommends that, on admission,
patients should be given information both oral and written form about their care, these should
include reasons for their admission, the plan of treatment when the treatment is given and the
people responsible for the treatment. The patients also provide a list of the individual to have
access to their health information. This form of privacy and access to information provide both
the patient to have confidence with their caregiver and know the people responsible for them. It
also provides a sense of responsibility and accountability by the care provider (FORGON, 2017).
The patients should be oriented about the hospital facilities especially the ward, what
standards to expect in the hospital. Also, the patients are made aware of the restriction required
which include the visiting hours, the number of staff working in the ward and what different
uniform mean by the wearers for the purpose of raising concerns. The staff should be able to be
distinguished by the patients by wearing badges to distinguish their different roles and to know
who the visitors are speaking to. In the ward, the staff should speak politely to the patient to
facilitate their needs also if they are unable to support the patient the staff should give an
explanation to the patient and do all that they can within their power to ensure patient’s needs are
attended to.
When authorized by the patients, the staff should allow visitors to assist in caring for the
patient, especially on feeding. The staff working in different shifts should have up to date
knowledge of the patient’s care plan and all the discipline regarding providing patients care
should be adhered and should reflect on the patient review. All health care is responsible for
ensuring that nutrition and hydration of the patient's needs are met. All members of
multidisciplinary should understand the importance of nutrition to the patient and ensure
treatment time does not coincide with meal time. To ensure that discharge is safe before

LEADERSHIP EFFECTS ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
prescribed to the patient, any discharge a staff member thinks is not appropriate, the members of
staff should be empowered to voice their concern without being criticized (Weber, 2016). All
concerns should be reported and responded to by the concerned authority. The top management
should have direct contact with the staff to facilitate and guide them on how services are run in
the ward. The presences of the managers provide a real-life situation which provides a learning
opportunity for the staff and boost their morale. Finally, hospital data should be available and
easy to interpret. These data should be compared with data from other wards to enhance proper
service delivery and for decision making by the professionals.
Transformational leadership has a major impact on health care due to the involvement of
the leadership with the staff in promoting the achievement of the organization goals. The role of
leadership improves the organizational culture strengths and motivation due to direct contact
with the staff (Marci, 2019). Training plays the key role to enhance services, especially in health
care. These forms of leadership promote accountability and make the players be more
responsible for their actions. Embracing contemporary leadership style promotes the individual
leadership ability which the staffs learn from the leaders (Vecchiotti, 2018). The leadership traits
entail key factors that enhance leadership growth through leadership molding due to the
participation of the leadership in the daily activities and delegations of duties to the members of
staffs. The leadership exhibits a high level of creativity among the team and because they are the
key player the members are able to learn from their leaders. These leadership abilities are passed
on down to the staff who can adapt to the same thus increased competency in the health
organization and improved organizational culture (Breevaart, 2018).
Conclusion

LEADERSHIP EFFECTS ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
Organization culture is a reflection of the leadership at hand. Being the face of an
organization it determines the success of and failure of goals realization of an organization. Lack
of effective leadership can greatly affect the organization culture performance which leads to
degradation of the health organization standards and ineffectiveness of service delivery. To
improve the effeteness of the health culture the leadership can formulate policies that look into
the warfare of both the staff and the patients which enhance the good relationship between staff,
patients and the management. The warfare of the staff should embrace a reward for better
altitude and punishment for poor service delivery. on the other hand patients, warfare should be
upheld to the highest degree to ensure that their need is met at whatever cost. The management
or the leadership should work to ensure that there are shared values from top-level management
to the frontline staff. The management should also work directly with the staff to promote and
guide the staff on how work should be carried out in a different department. This collaboration
among the leaders and staff promote effective organization culture of an organization.

LEADERSHIP EFFECTS ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
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