Organizational culture and performance: research on SMEs at tele-healthcare industry, United Kingdom

Among different key factors, Organizational Culture (OC) has gained a lot of attentions to be influencing SMEs’ performance and many authors have linked SMEs’ performance and its success to the organisational culture that prevails in the respective organisations. The previous research key findings have shown that there are different OC dimensions which can influence the SMEs’ performance. However, there has been no study done on the SMEs involved in the tele-health industry in UK and to investigate the effects of organizational culture on non-financial performance of this industry. So the current study aims to fill this gap by investigating the role of organizational culture on non-financial performance of the SMEs. The research also aims to address the gap by determining the key characteristics of SMEs’ organisational culture within tele-health industry in the UK as well as investigating the moderation role of innovation within OC-performance linkage. The Competing Values Framework (CVF) including four sub-elements (Clan, Adhocracy, Hierarchy and Market) was used as a theoretical bases for cultural measurement and for the non-financial performances measurement the three sub-elements selected: product & service quality, process quality and job satisfaction. In order to investigate the moderation role of Innovation within OC-performance link, two sub-elements was selected: product/service innovation and process innovation. For this current quantitative research, the primary data collected via a structured online survey as well as sent questionnaires to SMEs across the UK; and the 210 acceptable responses were received. Among the different organizational cultures studied in the case companies, adhocracy/developmental is shown as dominant culture and it is found to have maximum impact on organizational performance. Impact of product and service innovation as a moderator in ensuring organizational performance did not indicate positive correlation. However process quality was found to be improved in terms of product and service innovation in companies which had developmental organizational culture. Process innovation is not a moderating factor between any type of organizational culture and the firm’s performance sub-elements. Further, job satisfaction also did not indicate any positive correlation with innovation as a moderator in case of all the cultures within the study.