In order for an organization to function efficiently and achieve its mission and goals within a community, it is necessary for all the members or employees to accept the organization's values. These values are often well defined and an integral part of what the organization believes it will need in order to be an agent of change in its society. Some examples of these values are integrity, diversity, excellence, teamwork, etc. Although most organizations define their values clearly and all members are expected to follow them, the act of instilling the values and everyone adopting them is often the most difficult task for the organization. My time within an organization helped me to realize that it is through observation that an organization successfully fulfills its values. 

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          The concept of organizational culture and how it is both implemented and maintained within a company was first introduced to me in my Introduction to Sociology (SOCY 101) class. Towards the latter half of the class, we learned about specific topics within society such as medicine, labor, and families in order to better understand how sociological concepts applied to real-life scenarios. During our discussion on labor and employment, my professor developed the idea that each organization or company functions as a miniature society. This imagery helped me to better understand that every organization has a set of norms, sanctions, and values that are unique to it and that have an effect on its employees or members. In order to fully understand this concept, I think that it is necessary to understand what norms are and how they function within society. Simply put, a norm is a behavior or attitude that is considered to be normal within a society and that is reinforced through the negative outcomes that others enforce when someone breaks a norm. The purpose of these norms within a society, and also within an organization, is to create a sense of togetherness (solidarity) that will allow the society to advance. These norms are what set the standards within an organization and establish the behavior that organizations must implement and instill into their members. 

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           In order to establish an organizational culture where all of the members believe in the values and follow them, it is necessary to understand how a behavior is adopted. One way to look at both behavior change and the adoption of a novel behavior is to utilize a behavior model known as the Social Cognitive model. I was first introduced to this model in my EXSC 410 class, which is the Psychology of Physical Activity. In this class, we used this model to discuss how we could change someone's attitude and behavior in terms of exercise and health. I believe that this model helps me to understand behavior because it recognizes that there are internal influences such as human cognition, but also external influences such as the behavior of others and reinforcements that help to shape someone's overall behavior. Although this model has various constructs that contribute to the overall model, I would like to focus on one specific part of it that I think relates to the development of organizational culture. This construct is known as reciprocal determinism, which defines the connections that exist between a person, behavior, and the environment. Within this model, each of these three things equally impacts the other and can all have influence over another. In fact, the model establishes a dynamic relationship between these three concepts, which means that they are constantly shifting in the influence they are having on one another. Therefore, a person's behavior is being influenced at all times by the environment that they are in, and that is also influencing that environment. In order to draw the connection with organizational culture, this means that since the members of an organization are in that environment, then they are adopting the behaviors that are being practiced, and eventually influencing others to adopt those same behaviors. Through understanding this, we can began to see how behaviors within an organization continue in a perpetual cycle as new members began to adopt behaviors and long term members share their experiences with those behaviors. 

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           It was this passing along of behaviors and development of an organizational culture that I came to better understand through my time as a Personal Touch volunteer at Palmetto Health Baptist. This program allowed me to serve as a volunteer nurse tech on the Ambulatory Surgery floor at a hospital in the center of Downtown Columbia, SC. Through this position, I was able to directly interact with patients and their families as they underwent surgery and the recovery process afterwards. Some of my responsibilities included stocking the patient rooms, stocking the snacks, and transporting patients and their families to the discharge area. Regardless of which patient I was interacting with, the one thing that remained constant during this experience was the ways in which I was expected to interact with patients and the way I carried out those interactions. Since Palmetto Health is composed of multiple hospitals and employs a large number of people, it is important that they have a defined set of values and an effective way for their employees to incorporate those values into every patient interaction. The values that Palmetto Health chooses to focus on are integrity, dignity, excellence, compassion, and teamwork. In addition to this, the health system has a vision to provide care and compassion that they would want themselves and their families. These two concepts are clearly defined from the first day of orientation at Palmetto Health and as volunteers and employees we are constantly reminded of what these values are and how we should uphold them everyday. Although I think that this organization does an excellent job of educating their employees and team members on these values, one thing that I gained from this experience was seeing how everyone incorporated these values into their lives and encouraged others to do the same. Whether it was watching a nurse compassionately take the extra step to make a patient comfortable or observing how nurses interacted with doctors and techs in order to achieve a common goal, I was able to understand not only what these values mean, but also how these values apply to every patient. For example, some patients that come from surgery are in more pain than expected. When this occurs, a nurse takes the role of an advocate for the patient to the doctor, while the tech accomplishes simple things, such as getting the patient a blanket or the patient’s family members, in order to make them feel better. Although each of these people addresses this situation in different ways, they all embody the values of excellence and compassion that Palmetto Health encourages. Through seeing these values in others who I worked alongside, I was able to gather ideas on how I could incorporate those values into my own life and was encouraged to provide that care to the patients around me. By both being engaged in an environment where these values were practiced, and also being treated in a way that reflected them, I developed an understanding of how these values bring meaning to the vision of the organization and eventually began to shape my view of organizational culture and how that develops in real life. 

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          Through my experience with Palmetto Health, I was able to experience first-hand the reality of organizational culture and how that culture is fostered through the interactions that members have with one another and the organization's clients. In the case of Palmetto Health, the values and the expectations of the vision statement serve as the norms and goals of the organization, while the adoption and incorporation of these values into everyday activities serve to establish these values within every employee. I believe that my experience at Palmetto Health also serves as an example where reciprocal determinism applies since the organization cultivates an environment where their values are encouraged amongst all of their members, which in turn causes their team members to influence one another in their own development. This experience not only displayed how an organizational culture develops and functions in real life, but also helped me to grasp the importance of observation and how other members of an organization can influence the direction of that organization. Although values can be set by administration and well spread through education, it is not until these values become concrete in the form of people embracing them that we can truly see their effects, and it was through my time assisting patients and watching others do the same that I was able to grasp the importance of this.

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            Although teamwork and building values through collaboration is commonality and can be seen throughout every field, I think that it will be especially important for me in the future. Values are important in the medical field seeing as everything hinges on treating other people and the interactions that medical professionals have with them. If an organization is able to cultivate these values effectively, then they can achieve a higher quality of patient care. It will be my job as a future physician to understand that practicing values helps others to understand the benefit of those values and adopt them. Therefore, through showing others how to treat patients properly, I will be able to influence the medical field overall. I also think that this concept will be important for me in the future when I work with patients. In this way, there must be a sense of teamwork developed between my future patients and I in order for them to practice the treatment or advice that I offer them. Through using an approach where I accept and practice the behaviors I offer, I will be a more effective physician who shows his patients how to be healthy, rather than simply telling them. Through both my time learning about the values an organization holds, and seeing those values develop in real life, I have learned that behaviors and beliefs are passed on through observing others practice them, which will continue to influence my life and choices into the future. 

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