Organizational Structure and Culture Paper
NUR 492
October 21, 2013
Tisa Carlisle

Organizational Structure and Culture Paper This paper will review the organizational structure and culture of Palmetto Health, an acute care hospital located in Columbia, South Carolina. The focus will be on the medical-surgical unit. The paper will review the type of organizational structure and how communication is affected by the social and cultural aspects of this hospital. Also discussed is how Palmetto Health provides client-centered care to accomplish their mission statement, “To be remembered by each patient as providing the care and compassion we want for our families and ourselves” (Palmetto Health, 2013).
Type of Organizational Structure The type of organizational structure used at Palmetto Health is a hybrid structure. This organizational structure, as it grows, organizes both self-contained units and functional units into a hybrid organization (Sullivan & Decker, 2009). This hybrid structure improves alignment between corporate and service goals. The hybrid structure also encourages better adaptation to the environment while maintaining its efficiency. A weakness of the hybrid structure is conflict between top administration and managers. Managers often resent administrators’ intrusions into what they see as their area of responsibility. Over time, these organizations tend to accumulate large corporate staff to oversee divisions in an attempt to coordinate service and product structure (Sullivan & Decker, 2009).
Organizational culture is the basic assumptions and values held by members of the organization (Kaissi, 2006). Organizational culture varies from one institution to the next and subcultures and even countercultures, groups whose values and goals differ significantly from those of the dominant organization may exist. A subculture is a