Culturally-Bound Innovation in Romanian Teaching and Research Hospitals

This chapter discusses innovation in the Romanian healthcare sector, from the point of view of organizational learning, which is influenced by the components of organizational culture. Starting from the premise that hospital organizational culture differs from other types of organizations, we investigated the perceptions of a mixed sample of doctors and nurses from an internal medicine clinic of a large teaching and research hospital. The Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire and items selected from a questionnaire developed by the authors were used in order to study how the two groups perceived organizational culture and, subsequently, innovation, as both a component and a result of it. The results of the study show differences in perception between physicians and nurses, consistent with the ones presented in literature, and account for which facets of hospital organizational culture affect learning easiness versus which factors are negatively correlated with it.