MEASURING ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE

Organizational climate measures attempts to assess organizations in terms of dimensions that are thought to capture or describe perceptions about the climate. Perceptions about climate can be measured by questionnaires such as that developed by Litwin and Stringer (1968) which covers eight categories:


1. Structure – feelings about constraints and freedom to act and the degree of formality or informality in the working atmosphere.


2. Responsibility – the feeling of being trusted to carry out important work.


3. Risk – the sense of riskiness and challenge in the job and in the organization; the relative emphasis on taking calculated risks or playing it safe.


4. Warmth – the existence of friendly and informal social groups.


5. Support – the perceived helpfulness of managers and co-workers; the emphasis (or lack of emphasis) on mutual support.


6. Standards – the perceived importance of implicit and explicit goals and performance standards; the emphasis on doing a good job; the challenge represented in personal and team goals.


7. Conflict – the feeling that managers and other workers want to hear different opinions; the emphasis on getting problems out into the open rather than smoothing them over or ignoring them.


8. Identity – the feeling that you belong to a company; that you are a valuable member of a working team.


A review of a number of questionnaires was carried out by Koys and De Cotiis (1991), which produced the following eight typical dimensions:


● autonomy – the perception of self-determination with respect to work procedures, goals and priorities;

● cohesion – the perception of togetherness or sharing within the organization setting, including the willingness of members to provide material risk;

● trust – the perception of freedom to communicate openly with members at higher organizational levels about sensitive or personal issues, with the expectation that the integrity of such communications will not be violated;

● resource – the perception of time demands with respect to task competition and performance standards;

● support – the perception of the degree to which superiors tolerate members’ behaviour, including willingness to let members learn from their mistakes without fear of reprisal;

● recognition – the perception that members’ contributions to the organization are acknowledged;

● fairness – the perception that organizational policies are non-arbitrary or capricious;

● innovation – the perception that change and creativity are encouraged, including risk-taking into new areas where the member has little or no prior experience.