Cultural orientations and information systems success in public and private hostitals: preliminary evidences from Italy

BACKGROUND: The effective adoption and use of digital and computerized systems and records in hospitals are crucial for increasing the overall quality, safety and outcomes of any national health community. Prior research found that hospitals’ dominant cultural orientation affects the adoption of new technology. However, the organizational culture of hospitals can greatly vary between public and private hospitals. Thus, the ownership type of the hospital is likely to affect, to some extent, the aforementioned relationship between culture and information system success. The present article focuses in detail on this issue and attempts to answer the following research question: which cultural orientations are promoting information system success in public and private hospitals? METHODS: The authors develop and test two hypotheses about this relationship via two regression approaches (single-level and multi-level). The authors collected data from 172 respondents—clinicians and non-clinicians—working in two (one public and one private) hospitals in Campania, one of the largest regions in Italy. RESULTS: The findings of this study show clear differences between private and public hospitals. First, a dominant cultural orientation that emphasizes flexibility values (clan and adhocracy cultures) positively influences information systems success in terms of individual impact. Second, the influence of a clan orientation on individual impact is stronger in the public hospital. Third, the influence of an adhocracy orientation is stronger in the private hospital. Overall, the type of ownership—either public or private—of these healthcare organizations affects the link between cultural orientations and IS success. CONCLUSION: Managers of private hospitals should offer to their employees the opportunity to adopt and implement new information systems processes driven by openness towards the external environment in order to benchmark and learn from what was done previously in other organizations. Managers of public hospitals should set up human resource management practices, knowledge creation mechanisms, and internal communication capable of generating a friendly learning environment for their employees when adopting new technology.