Organizational Climate

Conceptual Overview

The term organizational climate was coined in 1939 following a study of children's school clubs by Kurt Lewin and his colleagues. Lewin and his associates characterized leadership within the clubs as corresponding to one of three styles (autocratic, democratic, or laissez faire). These styles determined the “social climate” within the clubs, which led in turn to particular behavior repertoires displayed by the boys.

Kurt Lewin subsequently developed his well-known field theory of behavior, which he linked to the Gestalt psychology of holistic perception and expanded to encompass whole organizations. The basic tenet of field theory is that social processes are determined by an interaction of the personal characteristics of individuals and elements of the environment. The theory is summed up in the formula B = f(P, E), where B = behavior, P = person, and E = environment. Lewin and his colleagues were especially interested in the impact of field theory in shaping organizational roles and social processes. In this respect, field theory [Page 1029]was invaluable in helping to understand individual and group phenomena within organizational settings.

Social climate as a distinctly organizational concept can be attributed to Rensis Likert, whose work expanded Lewin's ideas and still actively influences the ways scholars and practitioners approach organizational climate. While Likert's name is usually associated with the 5-point scales he invented to measure employee attitudes, his greatest contribution lay in his invention of the System 4 model of effective management, or participative management. Building on Lewin's models, Likert contrasted the System 4 management style with System 1 (exploitative authoritative), System 2 (benevolent authoritative), and System 3 (consultative). And, as in the Lewin model, each management style was associated with a corresponding organizational climate. Likert's use of surveys to measure climate—still the dominant approach today—was intended to measure an organizational climate that he considered could not be explicitly known to the organizations's members, nor was it something that could be created artificially. In this respect, culture questionnaire measures include multiple items that tap into a range of organization members' perceptions of their working environment that, together, constitute the members' perceptions of organizational climate.

Although Likert and many scholars regard organizational climate as a generalized construct, there is also great interest in particular climate foci, most usually relating to social or employee well-being. While some may see this as a limitation of the construct, advocates of particular climates (often framed as “X climate,” “climate for X” or “climate of X”) claim that this is one of the major advantages of the construct. Examples include climate for service, climate for safety, ethical climate, innovation climate, climate of silence, and climate of fear.

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