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Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate discrimination areas within public hospitals and discuss the potential reasons that will provide a contributive perspective on reducing discriminative behaviors. Design/methodology/approach The research was conducted in public hospitals in Afyonkarahisar, a city in the central‐west part of Turkey. Two distinct approaches were used to gather data, one of which was a questionnaire that was responded by 351 health care employees. And, the second method semi‐structured interviews were conducted with five health care employees from each hospital. Findings The research reveals that discriminative behaviors are not part of organizational life to a problematical extent in public hospitals. However, the dependence on governmental policies forces ideological/political engagements to play significant roles in public hospitals determination of discriminated groups. Professional solidarity, status‐based stratification and embedded codes of patriarchal culture are other crucial dynamics, first two and last one causing, respectively, vocational and gender discrimination. Originality/value This paper is an exploratory study focusing on discrimination among employees and from management to employees in the health care industry. Two distinct methods are used together to understand and analyze the areas and dynamics of discriminative behaviors.
Özcan et al. (Tue,) studied this question.