Functional culture

Its mission is to provide accessible and quality healthcare services and drug rehabilitation services and to strengthen the mechanisms for protecting the rights of the children, women, and errors with disabilities of the Maldives. Ministry of Health’s vision is to make the Maldives a good model society of socially protected and healthy individuals who are aware, who value their family ties and live a healthy satisfying lives. Ministry of Health consists of more than 7000 employees including the departments under Ministry of Health and all the Government health facilities all around the Maldives.

Departments include; Health Protection Agency and Maldives Food and Drug Authority. Health facilities includes Regional hospitals, Atoll hospitals and Health centers located in 286 islands. Ministry of Health is a service based organization. Meaning that,the organization provides the most necessity need, which is healthcare service for the people. Page 31 14 Before we dwell further on the cross-cultural spheres or cultures, let’s first review its definition. The concept of culture has been the subject of various academic debate, and there are various approaches in defining and studying the term culture.

According to (Taylor, 1871) Culture… Is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. Hence, the culture of a group or an organization can be defined as, the pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adoption and internal I integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct war to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.

In each and every organization, culture matters. It matters because decisions made without proper awareness of the operative cultural forces may have unanticipated and undesirable consequences. According to (Salesman, 2007) when companies “get the culture right” success often seems to naturally flow. The influence of cultural in business can be explored or identified in several cultural I spheres. Various businesses in a same country can also have different cultures based on the location and the type of the industry.

According to Schneider and Barbour (2003), there are mainly five cultural spheres of influence.

Regional Culture

Regional cultures are mainly the cultural differences within states in a country. It is important to recognize both, in order to avoid the assumption that doing business in Rome is the same as in Milan, or the assumption that doing business in Italy is so ere different from Saudi Arabia. Recognizing regional cultures helps us to appreciate why certain industries flourish in different regions, and why trading partners may be more eagerly sought across some borders rather than others.

Regional Culture evolves from time to time. And there are various factors that result in this evolution. These factors include, History, Politics, Economy, Language, Religion and Geography. Functional culture is where there are different cultures in various divisions of an organization. Meaning that, finance, production, marketing, research and development, administration, etc. These different divisions have different cultures based on the work that they do.

The reasons for these differences can be found in the external environment, such as stakeholder demands, and the nature of the task. Different stakeholders influence what is considered to be important and what is considered to be the best way to achieve.

Corporate Culture

Corporate culture refers to the shared values, attitudes, standards and beliefs that characterize members of an organization and define its nature. It is also rooted in every organization’s goals, strategies, structure and approaches to labor, customers, investors and the greater community.

As such, corporate culture is an essential component in each and every businesses or organization’s ultimate success or failure.

Professional Culture

Professional culture is related to the principles of workers. This type of culture is about the requirements and situations that the workers face as being members of a different professional group. This also includes the ‘proper behavior’ and distinctive image of a profession. An example of a professional culture could be; a doctor wearing a white coat and a Judge wearing a black robe.