Individualization versus Polarization: Organizational Cultures and Subcultures in Brazilian and North American Hospitals

Abstract

The present study seeks to generate systematic, comparable knowledge about the content and dynamics, of organizational cultures and subcultures of hospitals operating in the USA and Brazil. As a methodological approach, survey data on perceptions of organizational culture were collected from managerial staff of 4 US and 5 Brazilian hospitals.  Analyses of Variance and Cluster Analyses were employed to assess the locus of variation in perceptions of organizational culture. The results shows that while perceptions of organizational culture varied significantly by country and industry, variation in the cultures of individual institutions was much greater than variation in national means. While US hospitals studied exhibited considerable individualism in their cultures and subcultures, the Brazilian hospital cultures and subcultures were polarized such that the cultural profile on one institution was often an inverse image of the profile of another.