Developing a service culture-value chain for hospitals

This paper presents the empirical findings of a nation-wide survey to develop a multi-item scale for service culture and linked it to the various consequences from the employee’s and patient’s perspective. The qualitative and quantitative techniques were employment. The Focus Groups was conducted, then a nation-wide mail survey (more than 250 hospitals covered, employee questionnaire with n=1558). The scale development analysis process included various evaluations on the psychometric properties of the scale and AMOS software was used. The Exploratory Factor Analysis and structural equation modeling processes found that 21-item HospiSE scale was made up of three dimensions (i.e., Employee, Patient and Competitor orientations). The results of the measurement modelling process indicated that the multi-item measure has an overall good fit (e.g. GFI = 0.93, CFI = 0.917). The measure was found to be reliable and valid. It was also positively related with employee-perceived service quality and satisfaction. Besides, at the organizational level the findings indicated that service culture has a potential positive association with the patient-perceived service quality of the hospitals A new service culture-value chain was engineered for the benefits of hospitals.