Organizational Behavior

I would like to share the experience I gained within group project –a visit to university's clinic. Before taking OB course I thought that the only way to assess how organization operates is good or bad and had a very biased attitude towards state-owned organizations.

During group visit I learned how to better understand formal and informal rules of organization with the help of following methods: observation, interviews, participation, secondary data and provocation. I was in charge of observing people's behavior and making short interviews with the visitors. I found out that the best way to get a quick snapshot of corporate culture is to ask people how do they feel about service provided here and compare answers to formal text on company's website (secondary data).

Clinic we observed has specific organizational culture being non profit state organization dealing with students on the one hand and belonging to health industry on the other hand. Anyhow, we strongly believe that specific organizational culture of the company has the strongest impact on what we have observed. Firstly, as a clinic is state-funded it doesn't motivate employees to compete for customers. Thus, there is a relaxed way of settling problems with no rush. Secondly, visible strict rules coexist with bureaucracy and situational decisions.

Before visiting university clinic we had to make an appointment in advance (so at first we thought that we're dealing with monochromic culture), but in reality we had to wait up to 40 minutes in the line to visit the doctor. So, we realized that culture is polychromic, where appointment time in fact is flexible, many tasks are handled simultaneously.

The most widely used means of sharing information is face-to-face communication. To be convincing to the patients doctors need to follow the dress-code and the communication-code. So, university clinic is an organization with high context organizational culture.

...