Browsing by Subject "values"

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    An assessment of organisational values culture and performance in Cape Town's primary healthcare services
    (South African Academy of Family Physicians, 2013) Mash, R J; Govender, S; Isaacs A A; De Sa, A; Schlemmer, A
    Objectives: Improving the quality of primary health care in South Africa is a national priority and the Western Cape Department of Health has identified staff and patient experience as a key component. Its strategic plan, Vision 2020, espouses caring, competence, accountability, integrity, responsiveness and respect as the most important organisational values. This study aimed to measure the personal values of staff, as well as current and desired organisational values. Design: A cross-sectional survey used the cultural values assessment tool. Data were analysed by the Barrett Value Centre. Setting and subjects: Staff and managers at five community health centres in the Cape Town Metropole. Outcome measures: Personal values, current and desired organisational values, organisational entropy and organisational scorecard. Results: In total, 154 staff members completed the survey. Participants reported personal values that are congruent with a move towards more patient-centred care. The top 10 current organisational values were not sharing information, cost reduction, community involvement, confusion, control, manipulation, blame, power, results orientation, hierarchy, long hours and teamwork. Desired organisational values were open communication, shared decision-making, accountability, staff recognition, leadership development and professionalism. Organisational entropy was high at 36% of all values. Only teamwork and community involvement were found in both the current and desired culture. The organisational scorecard showed a lack of current focus on finances, evolution and patient experience. Conclusion: The organisational culture of the Metro District Health Services is currently not well aligned with the values expressed in Vision 2020, and the goal of delivering patient-centred care.
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    Open Access
    Why Southern African Scholars Conduct Research: A Comparative Study of Values
    (2014-08-14) Trotter, Henry
    Why do scholars conduct and disseminate research? This is a foundational question in academia, though one that is usually taken for granted in the literature on scholarly values and attitudes. Most studies – which typically focus on scholars from the global North – tend to assess academics’ feelings about research-related issues such as academic peer review, dissemination outlets for scholarly outputs, perceptions of journal quality, digital and Web 2.0 technologies, open access publishing and academic identity. They shed light on scholars’ attitudes toward elements of their research and communication practices, but they do not get at the more basic question of why scholars conduct research in the first place. In Africa, where most universities have only recently incorporated a research mission into what have long been teaching-oriented institutions, the question of why scholars conduct research is a pertinent one, and the answers cannot be assumed. Moreover, the purpose of university research on the continent is shaped by more than just the desires of the scholars themselves, but by those of their national governments, their institutions’ managers, students, overseas funders, local NGOs and community stakeholders. Thus all of these competing interests impact how scholars view the research enterprise. As part of its work of mapping scholarly communication activity systems in Southern Africa, the Scholarly Communication in Africa Programme (SCAP) tried to answer this foundational question by examining regional scholars’ motivations for conducting and disseminating research. Between 2010 and 2013, it engaged with four different faculties in four different universities (the Universities of Botswana, Cape Town, Mauritius and Namibia) so that the regions’ scholarly research and communication activities would be assessed with an eye for how disciplinary, institutional and national factors impacted scholars’ research values. In this paper, we explore the scholarly values motivating the production and dissemination of research in these four Southern African universities.