Work group culture, stress, and hostility. Correlations with organizational outcomes.

Understanding your organizational culture is necessary if you are to be successful in making and surviving the necessary changes in current environments. Although organizational culture frequently has been studied in the business community, there are fewer studies of organizational or work group culture in hospital settings at the nursing unit level. The existing studies have emphasized the need to understand the individual work group culture before successfully implementing innovation and educational programs, or hiring and orienting new employees on nursing units. This descriptive, correlational study describes the relationships among work group culture, work-place stress, and hostility and nursing unit outcomes, specifically absenteeism and turnover. Implications of the findings include the idea that increasing decision latitude in workers may positively impact absenteeism.