The role of organizational climate and culture in the school  (Page 2/17)

In order to assess the alignment of the existing school culture with the contemplated improvements or toattempt planned cultural interventions, it is first necessary to understand well the constructs of organizational climate andculture. The sections that follow provide a brief introduction to these complex and much-debated constructs.

Definition of Organizational Climate

Although the Merriam-Webster On-Line Dictionary (2005) provides no definition of climate that couldreasonably be linked to organizations, Owens (2004) related it to such terms as atmosphere, personality, tone, or ethos (p. 178). Thefoundational work in school climate is generally recognized as that of Halpin and Croft (1963), who roughly related their definition ofclimate to morale (p. 6), but admitted that time constraints restricted their consideration of that construct to the socialinteraction between the principal and the teachers (p. 7). Their research examined teacher disengagement from the teaching-learningprocess, the extent to which the principal burdens teachers with routine duties and demands, teachers’perceptions that their personal needs are being satisfied and they are accomplishingpositive things in their work, teachers’enjoyment of friendly social relations with each other, principals’aloofness and reliance on rules and policies rather than informal contacts withteachers, closeness of supervision of teachers by the principal, teacher perceptions that the principal is working to move theorganization in positive directions, and teacher perceptions that the principal treats them humanely. All of these factors combine tohelp define the climate of a school.

Many authors, including Schein (1992), have drawn sharp lines of demarcation between the constructs oforganizational climate and culture. Rousseau (1990) differentiated between these two constructs on the basis of climate being thedescriptive beliefs and perceptions individuals hold of the organization, whereas culture is the shared values, beliefs, and expectations that develop from social interactions within theorganization. The boundaries between organizational climate and culture can appear to be artificial, arbitrary, and even largelyunnecessary.

Tagiuri’s systemic model (as cited in Owens, 2004) offers an interesting means for integrating these twoconstructs; he presented culture as one of four components of organizational climate, along with ecology, milieu, andorganization or structure. Within his construct of organizational culture, he included assumptions, values, norms, beliefs, ways ofthinking, behavior patterns, and artifacts; this definition seems to parallel closely many of the prominent authorities in the field.However, his construct of organizational climate tends to be more encompassing than that of many of his peers. Within thesub-component of ecology, he included buildings and facilities, technology, and pedagogical interventions. Within milieu, Tagiurisubsumed the race, ethnicity, socio-economic levels, and gender of organizational members and participants, their motivation andskills, and the organization’s leadership. His organization or structure construct includes communication and decision-makingpatterns within the organization, the organizational hierarchy and formal structures, and the level of bureaucratization. Althoughthis definition is so comprehensive as to resemble French and Bell’s (1998) organizational systems model and can somewhat blur the core definition of organizational climate, it serves as a goodreminder of the interrelatedness of all these factors with organizational climate and culture. It also illustrates the broadrange of organizational issues that must be taken into consideration when planning for large-scale organizationalimprovement.