The role of organizational climate and culture in the school

The Importance of School Climate and Culture in the School Improvement Process: A Review of the Knowledge Base

It is essential to recognize that large-scale organizational improvement does not occur in a vacuum or sterileenvironment. It occurs in human systems, organizations, which already have beliefs, assumptions, expectations, norms, and values,both idiosyncratic to individual members of those organizations and shared. As this article attempts to explore, these shared culturaltraits and individual perceptions of climate can greatly affect, and be affected by, the school improvement process.

Deal (1985, p. 303) referred to organizational culture as“the epicenter of change.”Harris (2002) believed this so strongly that she asserted,“Successful school improvement can only occur when schools apply those strategies that best fit intheir own context and particular developmental needs”(p. 4). Similar claims on the need to consider school climate and cultureas part of the organizational change process are made by many of the leading authorities on school improvement, including Deal(1993), Deal and Peterson (1994), Hargreaves (1994), Harris (2002), Hopkins (2001), and Sarason (1996). Berman and McLaughlin (1978),Hopkins (2001), Rosenholtz (1989), and Stoll and Fink (1996) all demonstrated the pronounced effects of school climate and cultureon the organizational change process. Deal and Kennedy (1982) and Deal and Peterson (1994) illustrated how dysfunctional schoolcultures, e.g., inward focus, short-term focus, low morale, fragmentation, inconsistency, emotional outbursts, and subculturevalues that supercede shared organizational values, can impede organizational improvement.

However, not everyone agrees that organizational climate and culture are keys to organizationalimprovement. Barnard (1938) even challenged the rational existence of organizational culture, regarding it to be a social fictioncreated by individuals to give meaning to their work and to their lives. Deal (1993) viewed school culture and school improvement ascontradictory, whereas the function of organizational culture is to provide stability school improvement implies large-scale change,which introduces disequilibrium and uncertainty. This disequilibrium, in turn, can cause organizational members toquestion the meaning of their work, as well as their commitment to the organization. As such, it is not feasible to considerlarge-scale school improvement without either working within the confines of the existing organizational climate and culture orattempting to modify them. However, some authorities in the field have questioned the extent to which it is possible to change theculture of an organization through careful planning (e.g., Quinn, 1980). Yet others (e.g., Allen, 1985) have allowed that althoughorganizational climate and culture may be important to some organizational improvement processes, they are not particularlyrelevant to others. Finally, others (Sathe, 1985; Wilkins&Patterson, 1985) have questioned the extent to which attempting to make a major cultural change is worth the time, costs, and risksassociated with that process. Overall, though, most modern theorists and reflective practitioners of school improvementrecognize the important roles played by organizational culture and climate in the change process.