Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of hospital emergency department culture on the job satisfaction, patient commitment, and extra-role performance of Canadian emergency physicians. The conceptual model related four cultural archetypes from the competing valued model to the three outcome variables.
Design/methodology/approach: In total, 428 Canadian emergency physicians responded to a national survey. The conceptual model was tested via structural equation modeling via LISREL 8.
Findings: Culture had a relatively weak impact on the outcomes. Human resources culture related positively to job satisfaction while bureaucratic culture related positively to patient commitment. Patient commitment, but not job satisfaction strongly and positively related to extra-role behavior. A direct relationship between entrepreneurial culture and extra-role behavior emerged from an extended analysis.
Practical implications: Organizational culture seems to have more distal relationships with outcome variables and its influence is likely to be mediated by more proximal workplace variables.
Originality/value: Of value by showing that a key modern leadership challenge is to create the kind of work culture that can become a source of competitive advantage through generating particular organizational outcomes valued by stakeholders.