Organizational culture and staff outcomes in services for people with intellectual disabilities

Organizational culture has been shown by organizational psychology to influ ence important aspects of staff behaviour. In particular, mismatches betwee n staff perceptions of real and ideal organizational cultures have been sho wn to be associated with a range of negative outcomes for staff, such as st ress, sickness and staff turnover. The present study investigates organizat ional culture in services for people with intellectual disabilities. The ai m was to discover the prevalent organizational cultures in these services, and associations between organizational culture and staff outcomes. As part of a large-scale survey of staff in services for people with intellectual disabilities, information concerning organizational culture and staff outco mes was collected from 450 staff. A self-report measure of real and ideal o rganizational culture produced nine dimensions of organizational culture: ( I) tolerant/staff-oriented; (2) achievement-oriented; (3) innovative; (4) a nalytical; (5) social relationships; (6) rewarding staff; (7) stable work e nvironment; (8) demanding; and (9) conflict management. These nine dimensio ns of organizational culture showed generally adequate psychometric propert ies. While there was some variation in organizational culture across servic es, there is little variation across staff with different job titles. Overa ll, the staff rated real organizational cultures to be relatively high in a chievement orientation and fostering social relationships, and relatively l ow in managing conflict: and providing rewards for staff. Staff rated ideal organizational cultures to be high in rewarding staff, being tolerant/staf f-oriented and fostering social relationships, and low in demands on staff. Except for the dimension of making demands on staff,where staff rated orga nizations as considerably higher than ideal, staff generally rated organiza tions as being less than ideal on all dimensions of organizational culture. Organizational psychology theory predicts that poor 'person-organization f it' (i.e. a greater mismatch between real and ideal organizational culture) will be associated with a range of negative staff outcomes. This theory wa s largely supported by findings of the present study. The implications for practice and for future research are discussed.