Abstract
Organizational climate and culture may influence different work-related outcomes, including responsible conduct of research and research misconduct in academic or research organizations. In this scoping review we collected evidence on outcomes of interventions to change organizational climate or culture in academic or research settings. Out of 32,093 documents retrieved by the search, we analysed 207 documents in full text, out of which 7 met the eligibility criteria and were included in the final analysis. The included studies measured organizational climate (2 studies), organizational culture (4 studies), or both (1 study) at biomedical faculties (4 studies) or non-academic university departments (3 studies). Four studies had post-test, and three before-and-after study designs. The majority of interventions were face-to-face activities (meetings, different teambuilding activities), and two were based on organizational change. Six studies reported positive changes in organizational climate/culture after the intervention. These positive changes were measured as improvements in score on different questionnaire survey or were described through authors’ or external evaluator’s narrative reports. However, the methodological quality of the studies was low, both for qualitative and quantitative study designs. Replicable studies, using rigorous methods and clearly defined outcomes are urgently needed if organizations want to achieve a real change in organizational climate or culture for responsible research. The protocol for this scoping review was registered at https://osf.io/7zjqb.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Ana Utrobičić, MLIS, head librarian at the University of Split School of Medicine for her help in developing the search strategy.
Funding
This work was supported by Croatian Science Foundation, “Young Researchers' Career Development Project – Training of Doctoral Students”, and by the Croatian Science Foundation, grants “Professionalism in Health Care, ProHealth” grant number IP-2014-09-7672 and “Professionalism in Health – Decision making in practice and research, ProDeM” grant number IP-2019-04-4882. The funder had no role in the design of this study and its execution, analyses, interpretation of the data, or decision to submit results.
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AM, RT and MV designed the study. MV, LB and IB collected data. MV, LB, RT, IB performed data extraction and analysis, and all authors interpreted the data. MV drafted the manuscript, and all authors critically revised the manuscript and gave approval for the publication of the final version. All authors had full access to the data in the study and can take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.
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Viđak, M., Barać, L., Tokalić, R. et al. Interventions for Organizational Climate and Culture in Academia: A Scoping Review. Sci Eng Ethics 27, 24 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-021-00298-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-021-00298-6