Elderly care in Denmark has for several years been a focus for both politicians, the media and the general population. And despite the fact, that there are now numerous value descriptions as a starting point for the employees ‘work in elderly care, we still hear about employees who treat the elderly without compassionate insight and understanding.

As a nurse and deputy head og a nursing home in the organization Danske Diakonhjem, I am interested in how the organizations values are expressed in practice and how the values are integrated among the employees.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to explore:
How are Danske Diakonhjems values expressed in practice and how become the values integrated among the employees at the organizations nursing home?

Methods
The theoretical basis for science for the thesis is found in the hermeneutic theory of science, based om Hans Georg Gadamer’s philosophical theory and has led to qualitative methods.
Through field studies, I have observed how the employees at two different nursing homes in Danske Diakonhjem express the organizations values in practice. The observations are supplemented by two semi-structured focus group interviews, where I asked the employees how they express the values in practice, what characterizes the learning process around the values and what factors can support and challenge the learning process around the organizations values.

Analysis
I have analyzed the qualitative data from mine empirical data using theory from professor Cahrine Hasses cultural analysis and author and researcher Etienne Wenger’s social learning theory.
There is no doubt that the organizations values are expressed, but it turns out through the study that there is a big difference in how the values are expressed, despite the fact that they are the same set of values.
The cultural markers are different in the two care homes, just as the learning processes around the values are not uniform either, even though the organization through teaching provides a common starting point.

Conclusion
Culture and social learning processes are deeply dependent on the people present. He culture works through learned connections that are formed through action and the learning process is dependent om the concrete different social conditions and context, as this is where the learning resources in social practice are found.

So even though an organization like Danske Diakonhjem has a common values for the employees at work, the values are expressed in different ways.