Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction and Methodology: of An Organization."
Introduction and Methodology: of An Organization."
INTRODUCTION
procedures that influence work motivation, commitment and ultimately, individual and work-
unit performance. Positive climate encourages, while negative climate inhibits discretionary
effort. ‘Organization climate’ refers to the quality of working environment. If people feel
that they are valued and respected within the organization, they are more likely to contribute
requires attention to the factors, which influence employee’s perceptions, including the
quality of leadership, the way in which decisions are made and whether the efforts of
employees are recognized. “Climate may be thought as the perception of the characteristics
of an organization.”
Climate for an organization is like the personality for a person. As every individual has a
personality that makes each person unique, each organization has an organization climate that
clearly distinguishes its personality from other organizations. Organizational climate is one of
the most important concepts to enter into the theory of organizational climate as a mature
concept in management. The concept has also proved useful in predicting and explaining a
variety of job-related behavior, attitudes and performance and organizational performance.
Organizational climate by virtue of being a more salient cultural phenomenon lent by itself to
direct observation and measurement and thus has had a longer research tradition. But climate
is only a surface manifestation of culture and thus research on climate has not enabled us to
involve into the deeper aspects of the functions of the organization.
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“Organizational climate is less encompassing than the concept of organizational culture
and is more readily measured. Organization climate is how organization members
perceive the culture that has been created and perpetuated in their unit or
organization”
Many people think that organizing is about spending all your time keeping your home
perfectly neat and tidy. Or about buying lots of expensive containers. Perhaps when you think
of an organized Mom you think of someone like Bree on Desperate Housewives who lives to
be organized instead of organizing to live.
Some people figure that if they aren't obsessed with organizing, they won't really become
organized so why bother organizing at all? The truth is that just being reasonably organized
enhances your whole life. It improves your self-confidence, self-respect, and overall well-
being.
It lowers stress and helps you find more time and energy to do the things in life that matter
most to you, like spending time with family, pursuing creative hobbies, eating healthy, and
exercising.
Organizations with same resources, employees of the same caliber and in the same territory
may yield different results. It is the upbringing of employees in the organization that makes
the difference. Employee’s commitment, satisfaction and consequently the effectiveness of
the organization are influenced by overall atmosphere of the organization.
Climate is the atmosphere that employees perceive and it is created in their organization by
practices procedure and rewards this perception is developed on a day-to-day basis.
Organization become dynamic and growth
Oriented in their people are dynamic and proactive every organization can do a lot to make
their people become dynamic and proactive through proper selection of such people and by
nurturing their dynamism and other competences organization can not survive beyond a point
unless they are continuously alert to the changing environment and continuously prepare their
employees to meet the challenges and have an impact on the environment. As the human
resource department ism an essential process for organizational survival and grow than
optimum level of development climate is essential for facilitating human resource
department. In an industrial organization the individuals who are working in different
functions and roles are engaged in the pursuit of some over all goals or set of goals. Every
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organization operates in terms of a set of polices norms, which are sometime clearly laid
down, while at other times are in the form of rations and conventions to plan, organize,
coordinate and control its various activities. An organizational requires managers who in their
day-to-day interactions reflect a variety of leadership styles and skills in dealing with their
subordinates. The sum total these and many other such activities create an internal
environment, with in each organization, which accounts. For its uniqueness and identity
member of an organizational work with in and are consciously influenced by this internal
environment which is also called organizational culture and climate.
HELLRIGED AND SLOCUM define organizational climate as a set of attributes which can
be perceived about a particular organizational and or its subsystem and which may be
induced from the way that organization deals with its members several theme are implicit in
this definition of organizational climate.
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perceptions provide employees with direction and orientation about where they should focus
their energies and
Organizational Climate Assessment is a powerful instrument, especially when provided
organization-wide with specific departmental demographic separation and analysis. Each
category has been designed to assess one of the key categories, which affect employee
performance. This assessment should be administered anonymously company wide, broken
out by departments of 6 or more people to protect the identities of respondents. Every
precaution should be taken to insure confidentiality in order that respondents will feel
comfortable sharing their true opinions and perspectives.
The objective of performing an employee climate assessment is to identify the key areas
which are hindering production, reducing effectiveness and which might generate unexpected
costs in the near future. The idea and approach is for the organization not to simply perform
an academic exercise, simply because they ‘do it at this time every year’, but to critically
examine themselves to see where the company and it’s employees might be finely tuned to
generate higher levels of performance. Once identified, opportunities to strengthen existing
approaches, which are working well, as well as select appropriate interventions for addressing
the weakest areas, should be aggressively pursued for the maximum benefit of every
employee
Organizations are successful because of the quality of work employees perform. When
employees are cared for, and the right environment is created where there are no barriers to
performance, their true value to the organization can be fully realized Humans have
fundamental needs for safety and security, affiliation and acceptance, involvement as well as
self-actualization. The extent to which these and other human needs are fulfilled lead to
higher levels of commitment, initiative and performance. Organizations, which include an
emphasis on fulfilling the needs of their employees to some extent, will enjoy a more
productive and stable workforce.This assessment is designed with the following assumptions
in mind:
Organizations are successful because of the quality of work employees perform. When
employees are cared for, and the right environment is created where there are no barriers to
performance, their true value to the organization can be fully realized.
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Respect for the dignity of the employee and the sensitivities of human beings
Humans have fundamental needs for safety and security, affiliation and acceptance,
involvement as well as self-actualization. The extent to which these and other human needs
are fulfilled lead to higher levels of commitment, initiative and performance Organizations,
who include an emphasis on fulfilling the needs of their employees to some extent, will enjoy
a more productive and stable workforce.
This assessment is written with full realization of the realities of business, and not an
unrealistic utopian view of an idealized work environment. The factors emphasized and
measured in this assessment are the important levers to optimizing employee workplace
performance, not just creating an environment where everyone feels better.
Rather than only identifying potential problem areas to be avoided, this assessment focuses
on areas where human behavior can be leveraged more positively to create employees with
higher levels of motivation and commitment.
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Being organized is about:
Being proactive and not just reactive to all the stuff and noise out there competing
Being able to find what you need, when you need it.
Having a home for everything so that putting things away - and finding them
Organizations are successful because of the quality of work employees perform. When
employees are cared for, and the right environment is created where there are no barriers to
Humans have fundamental needs for safety and security, affiliation and acceptance,
involvement as well as self-actualization. The extent to which these and other human needs
are fulfilled lead to higher levels of commitment, initiative and performance. Organizations,
who include an emphasis on fulfilling the needs of their employees to some extent, will enjoy
Work climate is the “weather of the workplace.” Just as the weather can affect daily activities,
the work climate influences employee behavior. Every organization has a work climate. Within
an organization, the climate of an individual work group may differ from the prevailing
organizational climate. High-performing work groups can operate well even in organizations
that are troubled by declining funding, weak senior leadership, or similar problems.
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Work-group climate in
their performance by going above and beyond job expectations. Better performing
better results. In the health sector a good work-group climate leads to improved
How managers perform is crucial to organizational out comes. Work-group climate itself is an
differences in day-to-day practices of the people who manage the work group. Organizational
practices that managers can influence, such as the design of tasks and jobs, reward systems,
policies and procedures, and strategy, can also have a large impact. To influence a work
Clarity. An environment provides clarity when the group knows its roles and responsibilities
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Support. In a supportive environment, staff members feel that they have the resources and
abilities, take reasonable risks in solving problems, and discover new ways of working to
When individuals establish agreements among them selves to achieve a common goal, an
association is born. One or several groups of individuals is then vested with the
responsibility for implementing the agreements. These groups are the executive bodies of
the found.
While the term "association" is linked to the desire of a group of individuals to act in
common, the term institution originates generally from the desire of the government to
achieve a certain goal. In many instances the government delegates authority to a group
of individuals with the responsibility of achieving this goal. The way in which this group
of individuals organize themselves to pursue the goal constitutes the new institute.
Though the above illustrates some distinctions between the terms "institution" and
"association", the difference is far from clear. Some authors, such as Hutchins (1952),
use the term "institution" for any kind of social organization. However, in the present
paper the term "institution" is used mainly in relation to government concerns, and
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The term organization is perhaps the most complex of all and is used with a variety of
meanings. It is used here in a generic sense as the design of any kind of social arrangements
achieve a goal or set of goals. Therefore the term is used recurrently in this text to define any
Lit win and Stringer (1968) measured climate by asking organization members to respond
to questionnaire items pertaining to nine categories. Perceptions and feelings are obviously
interrelated, perceptions give rise to feelings and feelings affect perceptions. The nine
categories are
Structure:
The feeling that employees have about the constraints in he group, how many rules,
regulations, procedures there are, is there an emphasis on red tape and going through
Responsibility:
The feeling of being your own boss, not having to double-check all the decisions, when you
Reward:
The feeling of being rewarded for a job done, emphasizing rewards rather than punishments,
Risk:
The sense of riskiness and challenge in the job and in the organization is there an emphasis on
Warmth:
The feeling of general good fellowship that prevails in the work group atmosphere, the
emphasis on being well liked, the prevalence of friendly and informal social groups.
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Support: The perceived helpfulness of the mangers and other employees in the group,
Standards:
The perceived importance of implicit and explicit goals and performance standards, the
Conflict:
The feeling that managers and other workers want to hear different opinions, the emphasis
placed on getting problems out in the open, rather than smoothing them over or ignoring
them.
Identity:
The feeling that you belong to a company and you are a valuable member of a working team,
straightforward process, especially when compared to the methodologies needed to assess the
instruments have become the most widely accepted means of gathering and analyzing
organizational climate.
It is at this stage that organizational climate, and specifically motivation, may assume a
significant role. If the climate is healthy and positive in relation to the change(s),
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COMMUNICATION
they are doing, and what can be done to improve performance if its subpar. We saw this
operating in our review of goal setting and reinforcement .the information of specific goals
feed back on progress toward the goals and reinforcement of desired behavior all stimulate
The finial function that communication performs relates to its facilitating decision-making. It
provides the information that individual and groups need to make decisions by transmitting
Professional Interaction refers to acceptance and support from others, with involvement,
Work groups that demonstrated a high rating for professional interaction reported a range of
Formal and informal systems are in place to enhance communication between units. Rotate
responsibility for staff to sit in on the team meetings of other workgroups to provide
information to them about the work of their group. Report back at team meetings on the
Opportunities are provided for all team members Participating in a project to see the finished
products Work based personal development activities are included as part of professional
growth and development activities the focus is on team performance, not on individual
competitiveness the work group task and relational problems are collectively solved
DECESION MAKING
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Participative Decision Making refers to the perception that staff are asked to participate in
Work groups that demonstrated a high rating on Participative Decision Making reported a
range of the following behaviors. Staff understand the strategic context in which their work
group and department operate so that they can make congruent decisions access to relevant
Staff have a say over who comes into the team by involving them in the selection process and
allowing them to take turns on selection panels opportunities for staff to work in cross-
functional teams are promoted staff are involved in decisions which affect them so that they
have ownership of decisions. This does not mean endless consultation but rather working to
an agreed decision making framework staff can make and are supported in decisions relevant
to their responsibilities.
They have job related responsibilities and should be given accountability for these a means
for staff to access information or attend other forums is provided staff are kept up to date on
changes to policy and practices decisions are really participative and not made by only a few
of the same people in the work group staff suggestions are acknowledged and they are
thanked for their input the reasons for important decisions in which they have not been
involved are explained to them there are formal review processes for projects, procedures and
decisions so that the work group can discuss what worked and what they would do differently
next time a bias for action is promoted and decisions relevant to getting their job done are
made in a timely way a positive work environment is promoted where people are genuinely
encouraged to make decisions and ask questions to get information necessary to making a
decision.
GOALS
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Goal Congruence refers to the perception that personal goals are in agreement with
Work groups that demonstrated a high rating on Goal Congruence reported a range of the
following behaviours staff know the values of the organisation and see these modelled in the
behaviours of the management team business planning processes are transparent and
participative and align with departmental objectives the business planning process clearly
articulates how the work group will contribute to departmental goals and values information
about key decisions is shared team based performance plans are linked to unit and department
LEADERSHIP
shows a concern for their well-being and creates a pleasant organizational climate. It
has the greatest impact on subordinates performance when they frustrated and
dissatisfied.
3. Instrumental leadership gives subordinates rather specific guidance and clarifies what
is expected of them.
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4. Achievement oriented leadership involves setting challenging goals, seeking
high goals.
To study the social profile of the employees at ARS Metals Pvt. Limited.
To study the satisfaction level of the welfare measures at ARS Metals Pvt. Limited. To
suggest the measures to improve organization climate at ARS Metals Pvt. Limited.
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Methodology
Pilot Study
The researcher at the initial phase of the study conducted a pilot study ARS Metals Pvt
Limited, whereby he was able to glean knowledge about the chosen area of study. The pilot
study was very instrumental in obliging the researcher with a very clear understanding of the
field.
Research Design
The Researcher will adopt exploratory research design; the purpose being a more precise
investigation and to develop a working hypothesis from an operational point of view and also
Sampling Method
The Researcher will adopt snow ball sampling technique. The snow ball sampling technique
relates the set of procedures by the initial respondents who are selected by probability method
and there in after additional respondents are obtained on the basis of information provided by
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The main reason behind the researcher choosing this design is that most of the respondents
are in different places. With the help of referral researcher can identify the respondents and
SNOW BALL SAMPLING is a technique for developing research sample where existing
study subjects recruit subjects from among their acquaintances. Thus the sampling group
appears to grow like a rolling snow ball. This sampling technique is often used in hidden
populations which are difficult for the researcher to access, because sample members are not
selected from a sampling frame, snow ball samples are subject to numerous biases. For
insistence people who have many friends are more likely to be recruited into the sample.
A questionnaire facilitates easy response when the sample size is huge. It also facilitates in
collection of data in a short span of time. Moreover, the respondents may not be in a position
to reveal the subject with ease in an interview schedule; therefore, a questionnaire was used
as a tool to collect the data. The questions were in the form of statements.
The primary sources of data are that, which are collected afresh for the first time and thus
happens to be original in character. The primary source of data collection were, information
The Secondary sources of data collection were information obtained from books, journals,
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Pre testing
A pre test of the questionnaire was carried out among 10 staffs at ARS Metals Pvt. Limited.
The pre test helped the researcher gain more confidence and knowledge on the research
2. The results of the study cannot be generalized with any other organization.
Chapterisation
The whole study for analysis would be split into the following chapters:
Chapter 1
This chapter starts with a brief introduction of the topic then explains the statement of the
problem, need, importance, objectives and limitations. It also focuses on the methodology to
Chapter 2
This chapter contains various studies and articles done previously on the topic.
Chapter 3
This chapter would contain the analysis and interpretation of the data collected from the
respondents. The researcher would be using MS Office for analysis and would represent it
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Chapter 4
This chapter would contain the main findings inferred from the data collected and also the
Chapter 5
This chapter would conclude the study with the researcher giving suitable inference from the
study.
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CHAPTER II
ORGANISATIONAL PROFILE
ARS Metals Pvt. Ltd manufactures 'ARS Power TMT' re-bars with international acceptance
in an integrated steel mill. The company is one of the largest and advanced integrated steels
mills in Southern India, with an annual production capacity of 128000 MTPA. The company
The superior 'ARS Power TMT' re-bars are produced with TEMPCORE technology in a large
speed mill. The TMT re-bars are earthquake proof owing to shock absorbing properties,
corrosion resistant and superior weldability. The sophisticated infrastructure facilities for R &
D and quality control help the company to produce the best quality at low-cost. The quality is
Registered Office D 109, 2nd Floor, L.B.R. Complex, Anna Nagar East, Chennai–600 102.
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ARS Metals Pvt Ltd (formerly known as ARS Metals Limited) was originally incorporated
on 19th September 1990. Mr. Ashwani Kumar Bhatia and his son Mr. Rajesh Bhatia are the
year 1992. In 2003, knowing the widespread acceptance from the steel bar manufactures
throughout south India, the company started its own automatic rolling mill. The forward
integration was done with a capacity of 108000 MTs of rolled products per annum with latest
technology and well equipped infrastructure. Subsequently the ingot casting capacity was
The Company, in 2009, increased the capacity of Billets making by installing a new furnace
with a capacity of 100800 MTPA. The capacity of MS Ingots/Billets thus increased to 145800
MTPA. Also, Company has converted the Ingot Making facility into Billet making with
continuous casting machine. The capacity of finished goods has increased from 45000 MT to
57600 MTs per annum. Also it has increased the capacity of its Rolling Mill by 20000 MTs to
128000 MTs.
ARS Metals Pvt Ltd. is an ISO 9002 certified company, one of the largest single integrated
The Company has already commenced the 60 MW Captive Power Plant since August 2013.
As part of future expansion, the Company plans to set up higher capacity Power Plant to be
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The Credit facilities of the company have been rated by ICRA as on March, 2013. The
Company has been assigned BB (STABLE) for its long term facilities and A4 (STABLE) for
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CHAPTER III
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Organisational climate is about the perceptions of the climate AND about absolute measures.
climate, but it is not the absolute temperature that matters as much as human perception of it
(is it cold, hot, or comfortable?). It is only after knowing what temperature means in terms of
the probability that what may be too cool for one person may be too warm for another and
just right for someone else. Similarly for organisations, the ‘climate’ may be regarded in
absolute terms and measured by instruments, but is ‘felt’ differently by individuals. The
absolute climate may suit one person and not another. “What it’s like to work here” or ‘How I
Climate is worthwhile to understand and measure because there are organisational and human
benefits a ‘good’ climate, and powerful disadvantages of many kinds of bad climate
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‘Bad’ Climate has been linked ‘Good’ Climate has been linked to
· Accidents · Performance
and to bad behaviours such as: and to desirable behaviours such as:
· trust,
· Bullying
· operational freedom, and
· employee development -
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A key point to make is that a ‘good’ climate is not just one that keeps people comfortable, but
one that is strategically advantageous to the organisation while simultaneously bringing out
· fear, · respect,
· crisis, · support.
· anxiety, · entrepreneurialism,
· openness
Measuring climate
Measurement of climate seeks to identify the components of both bad and good climate, both
in absolute terms and perceptual terms. While there are commercial instruments that measure
climate, there are powerful arguments for having one tailor-made to the organisation, and that
changes as the organisation changes. Generally, the areas of interect to measure are:
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· Organisational structure / systems
· Management practices
Self - outside work - how work affects your life (good/bad) - vice-versa
strategic plans are highly mechanistic in nature, there are at least two occurrences of 'below
the line' interactions that need acknowledgement. Firstly, humans are doing the strategic
planning, so feelings and emotions are an unavoidable (even if denied) and integral part of all
group conversations . The climate that is 'felt' by participating executives will influence their
behaviour during that conversation. In other words, climate influences strategic conversation.
Secondly and conversely, the strategic decisions affect feelings and emotions of employees
impacted by the decisions and thus influence the perceptual climate. So strategic conversation
absent from literature on strategic planning. This is in spite of recognition that much of what
really goes on in an organisation takes place below the surface of daily behaviours, displayed
Before organisation-wide strategic thinking and conversation can occur, employees must 'feel'
they are in a safe climate that encourages their understanding of , and involvement in,
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from within an organisation that merely 'permits' strategic thinking, to one that proactively
empirical evidence that climate and culture do indeed impact strategic thinking (Harris cited
in . This line of argument provides support for the possibility of using climate planning
organisation. The same argument supports acknowledging human behaviour within the
resultant strategic plan - that is, the plan should acknowledge that it is dealing with humans.
In summary, the links between strategic plans and emotions can be demonstrated in three
ways. First there is the emotional involvement of participants to the process of developing
strategic plans . Secondly, every strategic plan impacts people, and therefore their climate.
The need to adjust plans to accommodate adverse impact on climate brings us to the need to
deliberately set out to influence climate. It is akin to a 'climate impact study' for strategic
plans. Finally, the previous two points prompt the suggestion that every strategic plan should
acknowledge and account for climatic impact, and prepare the climate as necessary. A
specific sub-strategy should conceivably be designed solely with emotional or climate goals.
The strategic value of having a particular type of climate for the organisation in question may
Strategic climate planning and alignment (the subject of current research & development
work by the author) therefore refers to an organisational system whereby the strategies that
result from scenario planning are considered in the light of ‘what kind of organisational
climate do we need?' for the various scenarios. The design of organisational climate should
address both external and internal environments. This question about climate then drives a
new round of discussions by a similar spread of stakeholders to plan the climate that should
suit the scenarios and resultant strategies. It’s about learning how to adapt organisation
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climate to suit the current business climate. More importantly though, it is about learning how
climate can easily, quickly and painlessly align with the next business climate.
don't like the idea of having to go to war every day, prefer other more familial or paternal
analogies.
However, there is no avoiding the existence of competition between and within organisations,
and that humans love competition - judging by the strong support for sporting activities.
Humans also love challenge, judging by the recreational activities we choose. Interestingly,
sporting groups also use the same war-like terminology - strategies and tactics.
Perhaps, then, we can learn something by looking at military cases. For example, if a group
Did you just make an assumption? In your mind's eye were they fully trained military
In fact, based on information you were given (a group of men is sent into the bush), not much
of any value will happen. Outcomes might improve if they have goals - at least they will
know why they are going. If they also have a plan, then it is more likely that the desired
outcome will be delivered. It is even better if it is a strategic plan, with matching tactics and
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· Stratagem: artifice, trick(ery), device(s) for deceiving enemy.
· Strategic: Of, dictated by, serving the ends of, strategy; designed to disorganise the
moving or disposing of troops, ships or aircraft as to impose upon the enemy the place
· Tactics: art if disposing forces in actual contact with enemy, procedure calculated to
Let's examine this more closely. Consider two combat groups about to be sent into an
aggressively hostile zone. One group is poorly trained, poorly prepared, and has vague goals.
The other fully trained elite group has goals, objectives, strategies, contingencies and tactics
· What about skills, and the clarity of how skills (group capability) match task
(required capability)?
· What could the army do to create the most beneficial group climate?
If climate is about my perception - the way I feel about being here, what is felt at the
indicidual level? To help explore this, consider two individuals in three situations. First they
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are combatants in national championships for martial arts, with high chance of pain or injury,
but each looking forward to the experience - nervous, some fear, but wouldn't miss it. Now
they're together and facing a mountain. Person A sees all the places you can fall from. Person
B sees all the handholds and footholds and assesses the various tracks for reaching the top.
Now, put them on the beach looking at white-caps and rough water with high wind. Person A
grins while preparing the windsurfer, and B can't imagine anything more frightening. The
different approaches to situations may be due to skills and abilities, and also due in some way
to a personal characteristic to see the challenge and excitement rather than the danger and
fear. Increasing stimulus increases excitement - to a point - then it becomes increasing stress.
A little bit of fear can be exhilarating. But there is a point beyond which the challenge is
terrifying, and that point varies between individuals, and between situations. The fact that
someone may have a low fear threshold for X does not mean a low threshold for Y.
However, you can hardly have a one-person climate. But imagine a group of A's versus a
group of B's at the mountain - then you have group climates. It also suggests how any one
person contributes to group climate. The B people do not want any A's spoiling their group
atmosphere, and vice versa. In other words, climate is of interest at personal, group, and
organisational levels-
So climate is personal, and personal behaviours influence it, just as climate influences
personal behaviour. It's a strong two-way relationship. So let's apply this to organisations and
We don't often think about fear as an issue in organisations, yet climate instruments
consistently detect fear, or variables related to fear, among respondents. There are many
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· Assuming there is fear, what does that do for the climate?
We have already suggested the importance to climate of having clear strategies, so are there
By contrast, what chance for success is there for the organisation with opaque goals and a
So let's assume that your organisation has clear goals and strategies. What happens now?
If the organisation just rambles on as always, reactive and putting out fires while responding
to ideas and whims, then having goals and strategies means nothing, and the climate will be
one of confusion and lack of commitment. How can any member commit to an organisation
that either doesn't know where it is going, or doesn’t follow its own map?
start doing strategic ones. Too often, organisations spend resources on a project that was
someone's idea, but it was never properly assessed for its strategic relevance, risks, or
opportunity costs of time consumed. The people on that project know they are working on
something that is merely a pet issue, and not really important in the scheme of things. How
do they feel? What are they learning about the organisation? How important a contribution do
they feel they make? Do they feel good at the end of the day? What sort of climate are they
‘feeling’?
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Ideally, the organisation has a hierarchy of projects, all properly assessed for strategic
importance and proportional resource demand. Assuming the organisation can do only so
much, what are the criteria for starting or stopping a project? What provisions are there for
compensating the greater psychological difficulty we have to exit a project than to start one?
How does the organisation deal with the many vested but unimportant interests – when egos
become more important than the organisation's goals? From those questions:
· How can an organisation protect people from feeling devalued - because they know
· How can an organisation stop a project, while protecting the ego of those whose
future ideas may be withheld if they are psychologically hurt as ideas fail to perform
· What is the policy for outsourcing, and what internal resources are needed to
Clear procedures help clarify climate variables. Unclear procedures introduce climate 'noise' -
climate movements with unclear origins, and variations between silos that interpret policies
differently.
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia RAJA AZIMAH RAJA OMAR AINUDDIN, JUNE POON
MEAW LING
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ABSTRACT
The objective of this study was to determine the variables that constitute the organizational
climate construct of a large manufacturing company in ShahAlam. Data were obtained from a
pilot study on organizational climate, motivation, job performance, and job satisfaction.
Using the facto analysis procedure, nine climate dimensions were obtained namely, risk and
further studies on the relationships between organizational climate and motivation, job
INTRODUCTION
interest
agreement that organizations should strive hard to establish the right climate to achieve
organizational effectiveness. Toward that end, organizations must first determine what are the
variables that constitute the climate construct. It is therefore the purpose of this study to
research related to the climate of manufacturing companies car utilize these dimensions to
be examined to determine whether the existing climate is conducive to jot performance, job
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satisfaction, and employee motivation. Studies by Litwin and Stringer (1968), Pritchard and
Karasick (1973), Lawler, Hall and Oldham (1974), Downey, Hellriegel and Slocum (1975),
and Muchinsky
The term organizational climate has been defined in many ways. Forehand and Gilmer (1964)
refer climate as a set of characteristics that (i) describe and distinguish an organization from
other organizations, (ii) are relatively enduring over time, and (iii) influence the behavior of
people in the organization. Litwin and Stringer (1968), on the other hand, view climate as a
set of measurable properties of the work environment perceived by the people in it, and is
In a synthesis of various definitions, Pritchard and Karasick (1973) define climate as (i) a
from other organizations, (ii) which results from the behavior and policies of members of the
organization, (iii) is perceived by members of the organization, and (iv) acts as a source of
pressure for directing activity. Steers (1977), in his study on organizational effectiveness,
refers organizational climate as the perceived properties or characteristics found in the work
organization and that presumably affect subsequent behavior. Since organizational climate
organizations with different practices and procedures will therefore have different climate
construct.
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There is a general disagreement among researchers on what actually constitutes the climate
construct. Litwin and Stringer (1968) identified nine a priori climate dimensions (structure,
responsibility, reward, risk, warmth, support, standards, conflict, and identity). Using the
climate questionnaire developed by Litwin and Stringer based on these nine a priori scales,
LaFollete and Sims (1975) identified six factors or dimensions that constitute climate,
namely, affective tone toward people, affective tone toward management, policy and
promotion clarity, job pressure and standards, openness of upward communication, and risk
in decision making. Muchinsky (1976) who used a similar climate questionnaire also
identified six factors which he called interpersonal milieu, standards, general effective tone
Payne and Pheysey (1971), Pritchard and Karasick (1973), and Joyce and Slocum (1984)
Although there was a diversity in the number of climate dimensions, Campbell, Dunnette,
Lawler and Weick (1970) identified four factors that appeared to be common to most climate
studies. The factors were individual autonomy, degree of structure imposed upon the position,
reward orientation, and consideration, warmth and support. While some factors seem to be
common across those climate studies, some factors appear to be specific to certain studies
only, and others tend to have fuzzy inter-study relationships (Muchinsky 1976).
because of the diversity of environments that have been studied (for example business
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Furthermore, as noted by Sims and LaFollette (1975) and concurred by Muchinsky (1976),
current climate questionnaires are a long way from manifesting consistent reliability and
validity as found in the Job Descriptive Index. In view of this, Muchinsky (1976) suggested
for
organizations that have no been examined before. Using a modified version of the Litwin and
Stringer's climate questionnaire the present study attempts to establish the climate dimensions
of a manufacturing company.
METHOD
Sample
The respondents in this study were 74 employees of a large manufacturing company located
in Shah Alam. Seventy-six percent of the respondents were production operators while the
rest were assistant managers (12%), support personnel (8%), and team leaders (4%). All of
them had at least a secondary school education and 92% of them were between 20 to 30 years
of age. About 70% of them have been with the company for 2 to 3 years drawing a median
salary of $478 per month. The data collected in this study were actually part of a university
sponsored research project on organizational climate, motivation, job satisfaction, and job
performance.
Procedure
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The respondents were assembled in a training room made available by the organization. They
were informed of the nature and purpose of the study, the general background of the research,
modified items of the Litwin and Stringer questionnaire (Form B) employed to measure
climate. Very slight modifications were made on the climate questions to fit the company's
environment. A 3-point Likert type scale ranging from "disagree" to "agree" was utilized. The
Analysis
The subscription FACTOR from the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) (Nie,
Bent, and Hull 1970 was used to identify the factor structure which was most representative
of the data from the organizational climate questionnaire. Identical statistical analyses were
also employed by LaFollette and Sims (1975) and Muchinsky (1976). The 31 items that
measure climate were factor analysed via principal component analysis and only components
with eigenvalues 1.0 or greater were retained to be rotated by the varimax procedure.
Resultant factors with high loadings were then submitted to reliability examinations using the
SPSS subprogram
RELIABILITY. For items under each resultant factor category, a distribution of responses by
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After examining the resultant factor structures, it was determined that the factors which best
represented the data from the questionnaire were that of the nine factor varimax rotation as
shown in Table 1. The nine climate factors together accounted for more than 74% of the total
variance. Items representing each factor was selected by retaining only those with a loading
of .40 or more on that particular factor and low loadings on all other factors. The resulting
This factor refers to the employees' perceptions with regard to the company's emphasis on
risk-taking or risk avoidance, and the emphasis placed on encouraging differing opinions
This factor identifies the employees' feeling of being adequately and fairly rewarded. This
includes pay comparisons among peers and with employees of companies within the same
This factor identifies the employees' feeling toward management's attitude related to
employees'
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This is an indicator related to the employees' feeling of pride and loyalty toward the company.
It
Factor V: Cooperation.
This factor describes the feeling that organization members work together as a team.
Specifically, it refers to the extent of cooperation among employees and cooperation between
This factor identifies the perceived degree of helpfulness of supervisors and peers in job-
related
matters. It also refers to the perceived level of performance standards set by the company.
Low
performance standards can be inferred as an indication of support and vice-versa. Factor Vll:
Rules Orientation.
This factor refers to the extent to which employees perceived the emphasis placed by
This factor identifies the degree to which employees perceive that company policies and
This factor refers to the perceived goal difficulty and pressure for performance, that is, the
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importance of doing a good job.
Table 2 gives the internal consistency reliabilities (Spearman-Brown estimates) of the climate
factors. The reliabilities, which range from 0.53 to 0.91, are considered sufficient for an
Percentage distributions of responses by scale of agreement for items under each climate
factor are given in Table 3. The general perception of the employees on risk and conflict was
that management was seen to be a risk-taker and encouraged differing opinions from
employees. This was evidenced from the distribution of responses which indicated that more
than 50% of the employees perceived that open arguments and disagreements were
acceptable by management.
In relation to risk-taking and risk-avoidance, about 82% of the employees perceived that they
were given the full responsibility to do their work well and about 57% of them also perceived
that they were allowed to set their own standards of performance. About 63% of the
employees believed that the company was willing to take risks in order to be ahead of the
competition. However, more than 83% of them indicated that they were inclined to perceive
On reward, it is apparent that the employees were not happy with the amount of pay they
received. Distribution of responses (refer Table 3) indicated that more than 50% of the
employees perceived that they were not fairly rewarded, not only when compared with
employees from other companies, but also among fellow-workers doing the same job. On the
contrary, more than 53% of the employees were inclined to perceive that employee benefits
provided by the company was good compared to other companies and more than 68% were
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inclined to believe that the company gave enough recognition to those who did their work
well.
Related to autonomy, Table 3 indicated that more than 50% of the employees perceived that
job
objectives and the various tasks associated in achieving the objectives were determined solely
by management. Apparently, the employees perceived that they do not have autonomy in goal
set ting and in determining the appropriate task. This could be because the production process
in the company under study was mostly automated. However, a total of 55% of the
employees were inclined to perceive that they could set their own production standards.
In relation to identity, the distribution of responses showed that the majority of the employees
were inclined toward associating themselves with the company, as shown in Table 3. They
indicated the feeling of loyalty and pride of belonging to the company. Only less than 21%
perceived otherwise. They also perceived that the company cared about the employees and
that they could seek assistance from their superiors when they were on a difficult task. Only
about 35% of them perceived that the company did not care about the employees and only
6.8% perceived that they could not get assistance from their superiors .
With regard to cooperation, a majority of the employees (refer Table 3) perceived that
cooperation prevailed in the company; there was cooperation among employees, and between
employees and their superiors. Only less than 12% of the responses indicated that such
cooperation did not exist. On the support factor, only less than 3% of the employees believed
that they could not seek assistance and support from co-workers when they were on a difficult
assignment (see Table 3). However, more than 80% of them were inclined to believed that the
performance standards set by the company were rather high. Although the
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employees might perceive that the company was not supportive, they believed that they could
always count on their co-workers for assistance and support to enable them to achieve the
high standards.
As shown in Table 3, the distribution of responses indicated that only 11% of the employees
perceived that management did not place heavy emphasis on formal rules and regulations. In
fact, a majority of the employees (about 73%) perceived that the company had too many rules
and regulations imposed on them. From the clarity of structure factor, it is quite, apparent that
the employees were not very clear on the formal authority of the company. As indicated in
Table 3, the distribution of responses revealed that more than 46% of the employees
perceived that they were clear on their company's policies while only 38% indicated that they
Related to performance standards, the distribution of responses (refer Table 3) indicated that
more than 60% of the employees perceived that they were required to achieve goals set by the
company, which they considered realistic and achievable. However, they also felt that in
order to achieve the set goals, their maximum effort would be required.
CONCLUSION
This study has focused mainly upon the dimensions of organizational climate of a
manufacturing company whereby nine variables were identified to constitute the climate
construct. The variables were risk and conflict, reward, autonomy, identity, cooperation,
support, rules orientation, clarity of structure, and performance standards. Since the climate
companies must be made with caution. Not only was the study based on employees'
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subjective beliefs that may differ from objective reality but the analysis was made on a
In spite of these limitations, some noteworthy findings for further research, particularly on
organizational climate were obtained. Based on the climate dimensions identified in the
study, further analysis can be undertaken to determine the type of climate that prevails in the
company. The effect of the existing climate on organizational effectiveness such as job
performance, job satisfaction, and employee motivation can also be examined. Consequently,
appropriate measures can be undertaken to improve certain aspects of the climate dimensions
The present study also revealed that the employees perceived unfavorably the company's
reward system and rules orientation. Apparently, the employees perceived that they were not
adequately and fairly rewarded compared to employee's of other companies in the same
industry, that there was major emphasis on rules and regulations, and that there were too
many of such rules and regulations in the company. Perhaps the company could reflect on its
current rules orientation and reward system in order to detect any discrepancies that could
3. Employees here are encouraged to speak their minds even if it means disagreeing with
their
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superiors
5. This company is willing to take some risks to keep ahead of the competition
6. The best way to make a good impression around here is to steer clear of open arguments
and
disagreements
11. My pay is fair compared to what other companies are paying for the same job
13. This company gives enough recognition to those who do their work well
14. There is a lot of warmth in the relationship between management and workers
21. When I am on a difficult assignment I can usually count on getting assistance from my
boss
24. When I am on a difficult assignment I can usually count on getting assistance from my
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co-workers
26. Formal rules and regulations are given a lot of emphasis by top management
27. This company has too many rules and regulations that have to be followed
Patricia W. Stone, Michael I. Harrison, Penny Feldman, Mark Linzer, Timothy Peng,
Abstract
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Objectives: This project sought to compare measures of organizational climate in ongoing
patient safety studies, identify similarities and setting-specific dimensions, develop a model
of climate domains that are hypothesized to affect outcomes across settings, and test aspects
of the model. Methods: Investigators who had surveyed health care workers' perceptions of
organizational climate in six studies funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and
Quality (AHRQ) were invited to participate. Survey items from each study were classified
using four climate domains found in a prior literature review. The authors discussed
independently tested selected aspects of the model. Results: The investigators who
participated had studied acute care, home health care, long-term care, and multiple settings;
two investigators had studied primary care. More than 80,000 workers were surveyed. The
model's core climate domains included leadership (e.g., values) and organizational structural
which was mediated by four process variables: supervision, group behavior (e.g.,
collaboration), quality emphasis (e.g., patient centeredness), and work design (e.g., staffing).
These factors affect health care worker outcomes (e.g., satisfaction and intention to leave)
and patient outcomes. Overall, the full model explained 24 to 65 percent of the variance in
employee satisfaction, but was not as effective at predicting intention to leave. Conclusions:
While some of these domains appeared in prior models, new domains—quality emphasis,
model invites dialogue among researchers and informs agenda-setting for future research into
organizational climate and the safety of patients and health care employees. This integrative
important domains.
Introduction
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Three recent reports by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) identified major safety and quality
problems in American health care and drew attention to system-level sources of these
problems. 1 – 3 As the authors of Crossing the Quality Chasm stated, “Threats to patient
safety are the end result of complex causes ... The way to improve safety is to learn about
causes of error and use this knowledge to design systems of care so as to ... make errors less
common and less harmful when they do occur.” 2 As a result, researchers, policymakers, and
health care providers have intensified their efforts to understand and change organizational
conditions, components, and processes of health care systems as they relate to safety.
Research studies in health care, along with findings from other industries, point to a wide
range of organizational conditions and work processes that may shape the performance of
restructuring their organizations in ways that promote quality health care. 11 – 14 Within this
decisionmaking, leadership, and norms about work. Organizational culture refers more
broadly to the norms, values, beliefs, and assumptions shared by members of an organization
or a distinctive subculture within an organization. 15, 16 In the past two decades, many
Some of these standardized culture inventories are quite close to the instruments originally
developed for climate studies. Moreover, researchers have sometimes used the terms
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Gradually, evidence is accumulating that links culture and climate to behavior, attitudes, and
motivations among clinicians. These behaviors and orientations can, in turn, affect quality
processes and outcomes. Many studies outside of health care settings and a growing number
of studies in health care, show that employees have more job satisfaction and experience less
stress and burnout when they work in cultures and climates that have supportive and
reduce absenteeism and turnover intentions. 20, 24 – 26 These findings contain important
implications for health care management. For example, nursing staffs are more likely to be
satisfied, committed, and stable in health care organizations that support and empower nurses.
1 A more satisfied and stable nursing staff may more readily contribute to patient satisfaction,
help reduce errors, and assist in the implementation of other steps toward improving health
care quality. 21, 27 Studies outside health care also link satisfaction and commitment to
A smaller group of studies explores direct links between culture or climate and behaviors or
outcomes that are related to quality. The dependent variables in these studies include employee
culture or climate on clinical and system outcomes is sparse. 33 Important exceptions include
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al, report that hospital nurses from units with low staffing and poor organizational climates
(in terms of resources and leadership) were twice as likely as nurses on well-staffed and
better-organized units to report risk factors, needlestick injuries, and near misses. 33 In
instances where culture and climate do not independently predict clinical and organizational
outcomes, they may still act as important mediating or contextual factors. 29, 34, 35 For
example, in Canadian long-term care facilities, a culture that supports organizational learning
and employee development was found to be a necessary condition for quality improvement
Quantitative studies of organizational culture, such as those reported above, often have drawn
internal cohesiveness and human relations development, creativity and innovation, order and
predictability, or competitiveness and goal attainment. 36 Shortell and his colleagues adopted
this model to the cultures of medical organizations by characterizing the respective cultural
overarching substantive theme. In contrast, dimensional models, including some derived from
the competing values framework, allow for the possibility of internal variations along
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Unfortunately, lack of consensus on the key dimensions and subconstructs for assessing
culture and climate has slowed the accumulation of evidence about how norms, values, and
perceptions affect patient safety and other aspects of quality of care. Investigators in and out
of health care have used a very wide variety of definitions, concepts, measures, and methods
to study culture and climate. 17, 24, 31, 39 – 41 Although this broad mix of measures and
definitions reflects the complexity of the phenomena under study, lack of definitional and
methodological consistency makes it hard to generalize across studies and develop evidence-
This paper reports an effort to help bring order and consistency to this line of research. In it
we develop and test a model of organizational climate in health care across diverse delivery
climate features may be more amenable to change than deep-rooted cultural assumptions and
values. Second, the focus on organizational climate, rather than culture, may provide for a
better logical fit between concepts and questionnaire measures than sometimes occurs in
quantitative culture inventories; it seems quite logical that members of an organization will be
aware of their perceptions of organizational conditions (climate) and will be able to report
these perceptions accurately in closed-ended questions. In contrast, members are less likely to
be fully cognizant of shared norms, values, and basic assumptions, and may face difficulties
44 Lastly, we focus on facets of organizational climate that are particularly relevant to care
This project resulted from an initiative by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
(AHRQ) targeting the health care workforce and patient safety (RFA HS01-005). AHRQ
sponsored a number of working groups, one of which focused on working conditions and
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organizational climate. This working group held a number of conference calls over a 3-year
period to discuss issues developing at AHRQ, provide an open exchange of ideas regarding
the measurement of organizational climate across health care settings and its relationship to
patient safety, and develop synergy among grantees. Investigators involved in this forum
were invited to participate in this project if they were part of a study team that had surveyed
health care worker perceptions of organizational climate. Based on a prior literature review
and input from the various investigators, the group discussed conceptual domains and
relationship to health care worker safety and patient safety. 18 An integrative conceptual
The integrative model is presented in Figure 1. The model's core climate domains include
organizational values, as well as style and strategies used by top management. The
The direct impact of these variables on patient and health care worker outcomes is mediated
by four process domains: (1) supervision, (2) group behavior, (3) quality emphasis, and (4)
work design. This model distinguishes between leadership and supervision. Supervision
refers to the direct managers' style or the recognition an employee receives on a daily basis.
Work design includes five subconstructs: (1) manageable workload, (2) resources and
training, (3) rewards (defined as monetary compensation such as salary and bonuses), (4)
autonomy, and (5) employee safety. Group behavior includes two subconstructs—
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collaboration and consensus (the latter including items such as “there is general agreement on
The four process domains influence worker outcomes and patient outcomes. Finally, worker
and safety.
An integrative model of health care working conditions on organizational climate and safety.
Although each research team initially conceptualized key relationships among organizational
understand essential elements of climate. Therefore, each investigator provided the health
care worker survey items currently being used in their separate ongoing research projects. An
item-by-item analysis of all surveys was conducted by two of the authors (PS and MH). In
this process, the original climate scales were decomposed, and each item was theoretically
classified using the developed integrative model into the best-fitting domain and/or
subconstruct in the integrative model. For example, items classified as measuring supervision
style include “I feel that I am supervised more closely than is necessary,” and “a supervisory
staff that is supportive of nurses.” A copy of all final scales is available from the
corresponding author.
Reliability statistics (Cronbach's alpha) of scales were examined and items were dropped as
necessary to develop the most stable measures possible of the theoretical concepts. Scales
that were unstable were dropped from further model testing. All projects were tested for
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multicollinearity among scales using pairwise Pearson correlation between scales. Four of the
studies found no correlations that exceeded a cutoff limit of r ≥ 0.60. Two research teams
found a correlation over 0.60, and each eliminated one of the pair on this basis. Additionally,
one study examined the collinearity diagnostics included in Statistical Package for the Social
Sciences (SPSS) 11.5 and found levels of collinearity high enough to affect the models. One
scale, with the highest variance inflation factor (VIF), was eliminated before the final
modeling steps. Final models for all studies were thus free of collinearity levels that would
Because the participating investigators were supplying data from ongoing, AHRQ-funded
patient safety projects, many of the investigators were still in the process of data collection.
Therefore, data on the primary outcome of patient safety were often not available. Instead,
the group members decided to validate the model using the most common health care worker
outcomes found across studies, which were employee satisfaction and intention to leave.
To test different aspects of the model, each investigative team conducted a series of similar
analyses. First, linear regressions were conducted to investigate the relationship among the
to understand the relationship among the core climate domains and the four process domains
—supervision, group behavior, quality emphasis, and work design—linear regressions were
conducted using the core domains as the predictor variables and the process domains as the
dependent variables. Third, linear regressions were conducted using core domains as the
independent variables and health care worker outcome measures as the dependent variables.
Finally, investigators tested the independent effects of each process subconstruct on health
care worker outcomes, controlling for the core domains using multivariate stepwise
regressions. In these models, the core climate subconstructs associated with leadership and
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organizational structural characteristics were entered as the first block of independent
variables. Then, the subconstructs associated with the four process domains (supervision,
group behavior, quality emphasis, and work design) were entered as a second block of
independent variables. When investigators found that employee demographics predicted these
outcomes, the demographic variables were statistically controlled for. It was hypothesized
that the independent variables would be positively related to satisfaction and negatively
There was slight necessary variation in the means used by the investigative teams to conduct
their regressions, due to the nature of secondary data analysis. Most investigative teams used
the subconstructs described as the independent variables. However, one investigative team
combined the subconstructs into overall organizational climate domains. In another study,
Results
The six participating investigative teams represent individual studies conducted across the
nation in the following health care settings: acute care (n = 1), home health care (n = 1), long-
term care (n = 1), primary care settings (n = 2), and multiple settings (n = 1). More than
80,000 health care workers were surveyed in these projects, and employee demographics
surveyed by each investigative team are described in Table 1. Diverse job categories ranging
from certified nursing assistants to hospital administrators and medical assistants to primary
care providers are represented, with the largest sample associated with a multisite study
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conducted through the Veterans Health Administration. The surveys used by each
The number of applicable items per domain and the reliability of the newly developed scales
from each study are reported in Table 2. All investigative teams, except that involved with
Study 2, were able to develop relatively stable scales at the subconstruct level. All studies,
except that involved with Study 3, had some type of measure related to the core
found in Study 2's organizational structural characteristic scale. Processes related to direct
supervision were measured in four of the studies; however, Study 5 had only one item in this
category. All studies had some measure of work design, with resources and/or training being
the most commonly measured subconstruct. All studies had some measure of group behavior,
and most measured collaboration (five out of six studies). Study 5, which was conducted in a
long-term care setting, had four separate stable scales of collaboration. Most studies (four of
six) had stable measures of quality emphasis, while Study 5 had a single-item measure.
Employee satisfaction and intention to leave were commonly measured across studies. Study
6 had a single item related to satisfaction, while the other five studies had multi-item scales
available to measure employee satisfaction. Also in Study 6, the measure of intention to leave
was dichotomous, compared to the other four studies, which had one-item, continuous-level
variables.
Reliability of measures.
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As predicted, the regression analyses within the separate studies showed there was a strong
relationship among the core climate subconstructs of leadership and organizational structural
characteristics. This analysis was not applicable to Study 3, due to the lack of measurement of
core domains. In the other five studies, the leadership domain or one of its subconstructs
variance explained ranged from 24 to 54 percent. The two core domains also significantly
predicted to constructs within the four process domains. Although the number of process
variables varied among the studies, in nearly every case the core domains or their
subconstructs had statistically significant predictions of the process variables. The core
domains also had strong direct effects on the outcome variables. Twenty to 34 percent of the
variance in employee satisfaction and 8 to 10 percent of the variance in intention to leave was
Five of the investigative teams were able to conduct the multivariate stepwise regressions
predicting satisfaction (Table 3). Many of the core organizational climate domains or
subconstructs (five of eight) continued to have statistically significant (P < 0.05) independent
effects on satisfaction. In addition, most of the process domains or subconstructs (25 of 30)
had significant independent effects on satisfaction. Overall, the full model explained 24 to 65
Results from the multivariate stepwise regressions predicting intention to leave are displayed
in Table 4. While the direction of the relationships were as predicted and negative perceptions
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leadership items had a statistically significant independent effect on intention to leave, and
predictor. Of the process domains and subconstructs, supervision had the most consistent
Discussion
This paper presents a model of organizational climate, which encompasses variables and
concepts found in six independent studies. These studies were conducted across a broad range
of settings and surveyed a wide range of health care workers. We present a preliminary
empirical validation of the model by reporting conceptually plausible associations among the
model's domains and showing that variables from these domains predict employee
satisfaction and turnover intention in ways that are consistent with previous research. Across
studies, similar patterns of relationships were found. Moreover, the full model was a better
predictor of the outcome variables than were the elements within the model.
As might have been anticipated from the literature, the climate measures predicted
satisfaction more strongly and more consistently than they predicted turnover intention.
Turnover intentions are subject to many influences exogenous to the realm of climate, such as
labor market conditions, assessments of employability, family status, and career stage. 45
The most important contribution of this study is its climate domains and subconstructs, which
can provide the basis for future studies in health care settings. The use of this model in future
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research will promote consistency across settings and studies, thereby facilitating an
An additional contribution of the model lies in its elaboration of subconstructs within the
domain of organizational structure; these are particularly important for research on patient
safety and health care quality. Information technology, for example, is an increasingly
prominent feature of organizational structure, which holds substantial promise for health
may affect the ways that clinicians respond to information technology innovations. 47 Hence,
technologies and their outcomes. Because of its importance, we included the technology
climate in our model, even though it was not well represented in our original research studies.
Our model also calls attention to the importance of the climate for quality, which we labeled
“quality emphasis.” Our model specifies the climate for quality as including the degree to
and practices, fosters innovation, and sustains the use of evidence-based medicine. As other
researchers have suggested, there may be multiple climates within an organization in areas
such as safety, service, or innovation. 35 – 48 These substantive climates are likely to affect
closely related attitudes and behaviors even more powerfully than abstract climate features
such as cohesion or climate strength. 29 Only 2 of the 13 instruments for assessing culture
and climate cited in a recent review contain measures related to quality climate, and none
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Due to divergent climate measures in the six studies reported here, the validity and
exemplar of collaboration and resulting synergy, the separate investigative teams were not yet
ready to pool the data into a single database that would be amenable to analysis through
structural equation modeling. Although we have explored linear relations between climate
and other variables, researchers would be well advised to look closely at nonlinear and
noncausal relations. For example, very negative climates might affect performance, while
other climates do not. In addition, climate may act as a contextual or mediating variable,
rather than a direct cause of important outcomes. Finally, two scales constructed in these
secondary analyses had lower Cronbach's alphas than often considered desirable.
Given the multileveled and multidimensional nature of organizational climate, the search for
organization is considering the implementation of a new computerized order entry system, for
example, investigators may need to understand only the employees' perception of information
technology and innovation, not leadership values and styles of supervision. Nonetheless,
some of the measures within our core set of concepts of organizational climate in health care
settings are likely to be applicable to a range of health delivery settings. Moreover, they may
Development and validation of a core set of concepts and measures for studying climate in
health care will permit comparisons across delivery settings and facilitate development of
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evidence-based recommendations about human resource management and organizational
design within health services settings. Databases containing climate measures are already in
use in some systems, like Kaiser Permanente. 50 Moreover, many acute care hospitals are
contributing data to the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI), which
has adapted measures of nurse perceptions regarding work environment and job satisfaction.
51 Outside of health care, many government agencies use standardized climate assessments
for benchmarking purposes. 52 Adoption of standardized climate tools and the creation of
databases that support analyses at various organizational levels will help health care
managers to better track their organization's progress through time, assess impacts of
organizational and technological changes, and compare the climate in their unit or
It is our hope that the model presented here will encourage researchers to further refine this
core set of concepts and develop standard measures for studying climate in health care as it
management within health delivery settings and perhaps facilitate the ultimate goal of turning
results into evidence-based management practices. The model needs further testing using
Organisational climate has been defined in three different ways namely (1) as objective
interaction. However, apart from such difference in definition many other conceptual issues
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related to the different aspects of the climate concept such as the dimensions, the researchers
raised context, facets, contents and levels. (e.g., Chhokar and Sethumadhavan 1992:
Hellriegel and Slocum 1974: James and Jones 1974: Muchinsky 1976). Georgopovles (1960)
standards which provide a basis for interpreting the situations and act as a source of pressure
for directing activities”. Forehand and Gilmer (1964) define “Organisational Climate as a set
of characteristics that describe an organisation and that (a) 63 distinguish one from another
(b) are relatively enduring over a period of time and (c) influence the behaviour of people in
the organisation”.
Litwin and Stringer (1968) define “Organisational Climate as a relatively enduring quality of
the internal environment that is experimental by its members, influence their behaviour and
organisation”.
Taguiri and Litwin (1968) Organisational climate has been defined as the “relatively enduring
influences their behavior, and c) can be described in terms of the values of a particular set of
ongoing property of the organisation which may release, channel, facilitate on constrain on
Taylor and Bowers (1970) defines “Organisational climate as the perceived traits of
organisational stimuli which became a group property through interpersonal interactions and
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Cambell (1970) defines “Organisational Climate as “A set of attributes specific to a particular
organisation that may be induced from the way that the organisation deals with its members
and its environment. For the individual members within the organisation, climate takes the
form of a set of attitudes and expectancies which describe the organisation in terms of both
static characteristics (such as degree of autonomy) and behaviour outcome and outcome –
outcome contingencies”.
Payne (1971) defines “Organisational Climate as a normal concept, reflecting the context and
strength of the prevalent values, norms, attitudes, behaviour and feelings of the members of a
sound system, which can be operationally measured through the perception of system
which (a) results form the behaviour and policies of members of the organisation, especially
in top management (b) is perceived by members of the organisation (c) serve as a basis for
interpreting the situation and (d) acts as a source of pressure for directing activity”.
Hellriegel and Slocum (1974) define “Organisational Climate as a set of attributes which can
be perceived about a particular organization and for its subsystems and which may be
induced from the way that organisation deals with its members. Several themes are implicit in
this definition of organisational climate. (a) Perpetual responses sought are primarily
descriptive rather than evaluation, (b) The level of inclusiveness of the items, scales and
contracts are macro rather than micro, (c) The unit of analysis tends to be attributes of the
organisation rather than individuals, (d) The perception of organisational climate have
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Benjamin Schneider and Rover, A. Snyder (1975) Organisational Climate is the summary
perception, which people have about an organisation. It is thus a global expression of what
Glick (1985) The psychological climate refers to the beliefs and attitudes held by individuals
about their organisation. The climate is an enduring quality of an organisation that (1) is
experienced by employees, and (2) influences their behavior. It should be thought of and
is just one of many in the literature. Even if there is some disagreement as to the exact
meaning of the term, most authors seem to assume that the organisational climate is rather
stable over time respect to attitudes and that it affects people’s behaviour.
Koys and DeCotiis (1991) define the psychological climate as “an experimental-based,
members of a given organisational unit.” They state that the psychological climate is the
Zammutto and Krakower (1991) define climate as part of culture. Culture is made up of:
definition and measures, but not their culture definition. We define climate and culture as
separate concepts.
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Moran, E.T. (1992) Organisational climate is a relatively enduring characteristics of an
organisation which distinguishes it from other organisations: (a) and embodies members
collective perceptions about their organisation with respect to such dimensions as autonomy,
trust, cohesiveness, support, recognition, innovation, and fairness: (b) is produced by member
interaction; (c) serves as a basic for interpreting the situation; (d) reflects the prevalent norms,
values and attitudes of the organisations culture; and (e) acts as a source of influence for
shaping behaviour.
organisational climate. It is a set of characteristics and other factors that are perceived by the
employees about their organisation, which serve as a major force in influencing their
behaviour.
These factors may include job description, organisational structural format, performance and
evaluation standards, leadership styles, challenges and innovations, organisational values and
An international conference was held at Arden house, New York in the year 1972. It dealt in
detail with the practice and theory of the 67 democratization of work place. In this conference
the phrase ‘Quality of Work Life’ coined by Davis. International council for Quality of work
life was formed to facilitate research and widen the knowledge and action for Quality of
Work Life. The concept of Quality of Work Life has wide variety of conceptual coverage and
became the theme of ‘Work Life 2000’ organized by the National Institute for Working Life,
Sweden.
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Glaser, E.M. (1976) The term Quality of Work Life recently has come to mean than job
security, good working conditions, adequate and fair compensation – more than even equal
Lloyd Suttle, J. (1977) has defined quality of work life as the “degree of which members of a
work organisation are able to satisfy important personal needs through their experiences in
the organisation”.
Lippin, G. (1978) Quality of Work Life is a broad concept. It refers to the degree to which
work provides an opportunity for an individual to satisfy a wide variety of personal needs- to
survive with some security, to interact with others, to have a sense of personal usefulness, to
be recognized for achievement, and to have an opportunity to improve one’s skill and
knowledge.
Guest, R.G.H. (1979) Quality of Work Life is a generic phrase that covers a persons’ feeling
about every dimension of work including economic rewards and benefits, security, working
persons’ life.
Cohen, D.S. (1979) Quality of Work Life is a process of joint decision making, collaboration
and building mutual respect between management and employee, which seems to cause a
change in how people feel about labour their work and each other. It is this change in the
human climate that quality advocated, maintains, increases satisfaction and facilitates better
Nadler, L. (1981) Quality of Work Life is concerned with improving the work place, bringing
humanity into the work situation and creating the environment where people will find work
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Ozley and Ball (1982) Quality of Work Life can be defined effectively as improvements that
enhance the work life of all members of an organisation and that increase the effectiveness of
the organisation.
Nadler and David A.Lawler (1983) provide a concise working definition of QWL as “a way
of thinking about people, work and organisations. Its distinctive elements are: (i) a concern
about the impact of work on people as well as on organisational effectiveness; and (ii) the
Schnake, M.E. (1983) Quality of Work Life improvements are defined as any activity, which
take place at every level of an organisation, which seeks greater organisational effectiveness
through the enhancement of human dignity and growth…. A process through which the
stakeholders in the organisation - management, unions and employees – learn how to work
together better… To determine for themselves what actions, changes and improvements are
desirable and workable in order to achieve the twin and simultaneous goals of an improved
quality of life at work for all members of the organisation and greater effectiveness for both
Moskal, B.S. (1989) Quality of Work Life means simply giving workers the opportunity to
make decisions about their jobs, the design of their work place, and what they need best to
make products.
Jain, Sangeta (1991) viewed QWL as consisting of a ‘whole parcel of terms and notions all of
which really belong under the Quality of Working Life Umbrella’. They include industrial
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and co-operative, working together, workers involvement, workers participation and co-
operative work structures. According to her, QWL is ‘the sum of all these various attempts to
label a general new direction for work organisations in the late 20th century. 70
Eaton, et al (1992) Quality of Work Life is a term that has been used to describe a wide
variety of workplace programmes, which may include union management cooperation, work
Bernardin and Russel (1993) Quality of Work Life refers to the level of satisfaction,
motivation, involvement and commitment of individuals experience with respect to their lives
at work. Quality of Work Life is the degree to which individuals are able to satisfy their
important personal needs (e.g. need for independence) while employed of the firm.
Tambe, M.R. (2000) In a broad sense QWL includes job enrichment, group work concept,
ORGANISATIONAL CLIMATE:
Organisational Climate is one of the most important concepts to enter in to the theory of
organisations in this century (Guion, 1973). The intensive research as well as debates on its
conceptualization and assessment during the last three and a half decades seems to have
has also proved useful in predicting and explaining a variety of job related behaviours,
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(Kacka and Kirk, 1968: Lawler et al, 1974). An overview of the history of the organisational
climate research indicated that the concept has evolved through four approaches namely,
3) Interactionist approach
Due to the influence of sociological theories, many of the organisational researches in the
1940’s and 1950’s had focused on the structural / sociological aspects (e.g.Fayol, 1940:
Parson, 1956: Weber, 1964) of the organisations. Consequently early researchers defined
efforts mainly on the physical characteristics of the organisation that people notice or
observe. For example Forehand and Glimmer (1964) define organisational climate as a set of
characteristics relatively enduring over time that describe the organisation and distinguish it
These as well as the other initial climate researchers who adopted a structuralism view have
emphasized the environmental and situational factors than the individual cognition (e.g. Fried
Lander and Margulies, 1969). They in general argued that individuals in any work
environment tend to have homogeneous perceptions of the objective reality. This perspective,
however, failed to satisfactorily explain the wide variations observed in the perceptions of
climate by the individuals working in the same physical environment as well as the
inconsistent relationship between the structural factors and climate perceptions (Berger and
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Cummings, 1979: Schneider and Reichers, 1983). The structural view also failed to predict
and explain the human behavior satisfactorily in terms of structural variables alone. The
limitations of the structural view seem to have prompted some authors to develop the
James and Jones (1974) defined organisational climate a psychological meaningful cognitive
representations of the situations. They defined climate as an attribute of the individual, which
is learned, historical and resistant to change (James and Sell, 1981). Similarly, Schneider
individuals to make sense of the world and know how to behave. This view which emphasis
the cognitive representation and perceptions defined climate as largely subjective and
individual attribute. However, these models did not recognize the impact of environmental
factors on behaviour and overlooked the fact that the same person may behave differently in
different environments. The failure to predict and explain human behaviour satisfactorily,
lead to the wide acceptance of the interactionist perspective on climate as propounded by the
Interactionist Approach:
The historical roots of the concept of organisational climate as it became widely accepted
later during 1980s, remains in the pioneering studies conducted by Kurt Lewin and the
associates in the 1930s. Kurt Lewin proposed that behaviour is a function of the interaction
between person and environment. Lewin 1936 emphasized that the perception and
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construction of the environment by the individuals will be more powerful predictor of
(Lewin 1936). Lewin and his associates also conducted experiments to show the effect of
different leader induced climates namely authoritarian, democratic and laisser-faire on the
behaviour of the followers. (Lewin, Lippit and White, 1939). Owing to the influence of these
pioneering works, more attention was paid to individual perceptions than organisational
characteristics during the 1960s by the organisational climate researchers. Litwin and Stringer
(1968) in their landmark study brought the concept of organisational climate to lime light.
motivation. They predicated that, being an important link between the organisational
environmental and individual motivation, the perceived organisational climate will help
researchers and managers to diagnose the de-motivating factors present in the organisation.
environment, perceived directly or indirectly by the people who live and work in that
Scheneider and Hall (1972) this notion of perceived organisational climate represents an
definition as well as the instrument for assessing the organisational climate, offered by
Litwin and Stringer (1968) gained wide acceptance among the organisational researchers and
managers later.
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well as decisions on organisational design. Despite the overwhelming impact of Litwin and
Stringer’s definition and operationalisation of the concept, the researchers have attempted to
develop new approaches to conceptualize and operationalise the concept. The driving needs
behind such innovations were: a) The need to make the concept of climate more relevant to
the specific sample, organisation, context, researcher’s objective, theoretical frameworks and
climate more practically useful, theoretically rigorous, and methodologically perfect. Many
approaches which constitute this third stage in the evolution of the concept of organisational
climate is discussed in the remaining part of this chapter while discussing the various
organisational climate. Furthermore there are several approaches to the concept of climate, of
which two in particular have received substantial patronage: the cognitive schema approach
and the shared perception approach. The first approach regards the concept of climate as an
individual perception and cognitive representation of the work environment. From this
climate (Anderson, & West, 1998; Mathisen & Einarsen 2004). Reichers and Schneider
(1990) define organisational climate as the shared perception of the way things
are around here. It is important to realize that from these two approaches, there is no “best”
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Krech and Crutchfield (1961) explained the individual’s total conception of the worlds in
which he exists… it includes his knowledge, beliefs and memories and his view of the past
and future as well as of the present; and it may include domains of life reached after mortal
‘death’ – heaven and hell paradise and purgatory. It is not, of course, the same as the actual
physical and social environments described by the outside observer. It is what exists
subjectively for the person. His life space may correspond in some way with the actual
external environment but it also deviated from them in radical degree, and varies markedly
Forehand and Gilmer (1964) stated that variables like structure, goals, supervisory practices,
etc. interact with personality to produce perceptions and it is through these perceptions that
Asschin (1965) puts, if two sets of factors interact in a complex situation requiring us to
develop theories and research approaches which can deal with systems and independent
phenomenon.
Frederikson (1966) on the basis of laboratory studies involving 260 middle level managers
concludes that different organisational climate has different effects on human performance.
He summarises his findings in the following statement: It appears that the amount of
administrative work in the stimulated job is more predictable in a climate that encourages
innovation than in one that encourages standard procedures and that in an innovative climate
(but not in a rules climate), greater productivity can be expected of people with skills and
attitudes that are associated with independence of thought and action and the ability to be
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Litwin and Stingers (1968) study – Measuring organisational climate trying to measure
organisation climate is an attempt to capture the sense, environment, order and pattern of an
them in Structure – The organisation’s rules, red tape and constraints, Challenge and
Responsibility – The feeling of “being one’s own boss”, Rewards – The feeling of being
adequately and equitably rewarded by the organisation, Warmth and Support – The feeling of
helpfulness, supportiveness, and good fellowship in the work environment, Risk and Risk
taking – The amount of challenge and risk in the work environment, Tolerance and Conflict –
The degree to which the work environment can tolerate different opinions, Organisational
Identity – The degree of group loyalty perceived by members, Performance standards and
expectations – The perceived importance of performance and the clarity of the expectations
concerning performance.
Friedlander and Margulics (1969) conducted a study in organisational climate, the objective
of the study was to determine the relationship between organisational climate and the job
individual job satisfaction and this links varies with different types of climate.
Stren (1970) explored the association between a personal needs and perception of climate
using Murray’s ‘need press’ theory framework for both personality measure and climate
measure. Joint factor analysis of measure shows little overlap between them. The evidence,
organisation and is not totally idiosyncratic, but say something about organisation reality.
Whisendpaul (1971) as studied in his book police ‘supervision’ that, when an individual joins
in the organisation, he brings with all characters of a whole man, perception, needs, attitudes,
motivation, tension, knowledge and problem solving capacities. Though he has moved from
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an individual environment to an organisation environment, we can expect the same laws to
Baugratel (1971) conducted a study on organisational climate, the objectives of the study was
Schneider and Hall (1972) in the study on organisational climate aimed to find the interaction
climate. The authors in the findings perceived organisational climate as a phenomenon that
Driehard and Kanarick (1973) conducted a study on organisational climate; the objective of
the study was to find the effect of organisational climate on job satisfaction and job
performance. The study revealed that organisational climate is strongly related to employee
Guion (1973) has recommended that if organisational climate must be studied through
the following procedure be followed, all members of a given organisational unit may be given
a set of statements, each relating to an organisational attribute, and asked to report whether
the same were “true” or “not true”, thereby determining the frequency of endorsement. The
the frequency of endorsement is not significantly different from 100 percent. He has
recommended that inter-rater agreement indices should not depart significantly from 1.00.
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Pajne and Mansfield (1973) conducted the study on organisational climate; the objective of
the study was to determine the linkage between individual and organisation. The findings of
the study revealed that there is conceptual linkage between organisation and individual that
intervenes between specific situation attitudes on events and individual perceptions, attitudes
Badris (1974) examines the effect of group’s size, tenure, position, power and task structure
on the relationship holds under some conditions and not under others. Insel and Maos (1974)
conducted a study on organisational climate; the objective of the study was to determine the
influence of organisation on individuals. The findings of the study revealed that like an
individual organisation too has its own unique identity of personality, which exerts directional
organisation members tend to adapt, their organisations to the environments which they
believe exists, regardless of whether their perceptions would be objectively confirmed or not.
Thus, the usefulness of subjective perceptions is not mention. It was found that different
climate dimensions influences individual job satisfaction nor nurses and administrators.
James and Jones (1974) conducted a major review of the theory and research on
organisational climate and identified climate in three separate ways that were not mutually
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Slocum (1974) point out, the intent of organisational climate is to clearly evoke perceptual
rather than attitudinal or other typed of responses: that is , they stimulate, or intend to
stimulate, the subject to orient himself with specific facts and to express his opinion as to
how he perceives those facts, not whether he likes them or not. Thus, climate instruments are
meant to describe work environment whereas satisfaction instruments serve to evaluate them.
Gavin, J.F. (1975) examined personnel and organisational correlated of climate perceptions to
determine the interaction of the two in influencing organisational climate. The results indicate
that climate perceptions are influenced equally by personal and organisational factors.
Schneider (1975) describing climate to have been conceptualized across studies in one of
Payne and Pough (1976) have studied through both objective and subjective measures.
measure group perceptions. Here, a member responds to instruments with statement such as
the jobs in this organisation are clearly defined and logically structured, the employees here
Hackman (1976) pointed out substantial knowledge, available attitudes of individuals, which
are important for understanding organisational behaviour, but less is known about
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Johnston (1976) in his study research found two climates in a study of professionals in a
small consulting firm. He noticed that longterm employees deemed the climate flexible,
and generally organize, adaptive in its environment. Whereas, newer employees saw as rigid,
organisational goals.
James (1982) has suggested another criterion for inter-rater reliability and aggregation of
climate scores over individuals. In this method, inter-rater reliability is defined as the degree
to which raters agree with respect to there rating (perceptions) of a particular target (e.g. the
is desired to have an estimate of inter-rater reliability separately for each group that is not a
Baldev, R. Sharma (1983) in his studies states that organisational climate is a multi
dimensional phenomenon. The term organisational climate as used here refers to a set of
characteristics, which can be individual from the way an organisation deals with the members
in the function of various personnel policies and practices as perceived by the members of
that organisation. According to this study the dimensions of organisational climate which
were used for collection of date are Scope for advanced, Recognition and Appreciation,
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Grievance Handling, Safety and Security, Monetary Benefit, Training and Education,
Ashforth (1985) discusses the integrationist perspective and highlights the susceptibility of
newcomers to influence outcomes in their desire to fit into a new setting. Social comparison
theory explains that individual compare their belief to others whom they perceive to be
similar to them (for example, people in the same job). Normative social influence and the
stake that group members have in maintaining the frame of reference of the prescribed
Organisational climate has much to offer in terms of its ability to explain the behaviour of
people the work place. He puts forward the view that climate has the potential to facilitate a
Ekvall (1987) in his study concludes by stating, “In an overall organisational model climate
can be seen as an intervening variable in the process between input an output, and one that
has a modifying effect on this process. Climate affects organisational and psychological
processes, and thus acquires an influence over the results of organisational operations”.
Pareek (1989) proposed that a framework based on motivation seems to be quite relevant for
the study of organisational climate. Organisational climate studied in this framework can also
be called “motivational Climate”. He argued that six motives are particularly appropriate in
climate and motivation. These motives are achievement, affiliation, experience, influence,
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management, communication, decision making, trust, management of rewards, risk taking,
and innovation and change. He argued that the way in which these twelve dimensions of
climate operate in an organisation indicated the underlying motive of top management and
the principal motive that is likely to be generated and sustained within the organisation’s
population. When the twelve dimensions are combined with the six motives mentioned
earlier, a matrix is formed that can be useful in diagnosing the motivational climate of an
organisation.
Ekvall (1990) the organisational climate is important due to its potential to influence different
making, learning and motivation can all be affected by the organisational climate. This in turn
might have an impact on the effectiveness and productivity of the organisation as well as the
work environment and employee well being in the work place. In an high risk environment
such as the Air Traffic Control (ATC) industry, it might also have an effect on safety
standards.
Falix Wilson Francis, F. (1990) In his study identified the level of organisational climate form
the angle of welfare measures. According to the researcher’s view welfare measures are very
much essential in order to have good organisational climate. For by giving sound welfare
Kopelman, Brief and Guzzo (1990) provided a linear model of organisation functioning that
demonstrates the role of culture and climate as they are ultimately linked to organisational
productivity. The model starts with societal and organisational culture as setting the parameters of
the human resource practices. He states that organisational climate reflects both individual and
performance and citizenship are seen as intervening between the climate of the
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organisation and the ultimate outcomes. Attachment will affect such factors as absenteeism
Richard, M. Hodgettes (1991) states that organisational climate can range along a continuous
form favorable to neutral and to unfavorable. Both employees and employers want a more
favorable climate because of its benefits such as better performance and job satisfaction.
Several typical climates that are identified to contribute to a favorable climate are given
below, Quality of work life, Amount of trust, Upward and downward communication, Feeling
Zammuto and Krakower (1991) used the competing values framework to measure climate
and relate it to organisational characteristics. They find different climates are correlated with
different organisational characteristics, i.e., there is a fit between the climate and the
rewards, resistance to change, leader credibility, and scape-goating) and strategy dimensions
culture, internal process culture, and rational culture. They concluded that cultural type is
Moran and Volkwein (1992) examined the relationship between culture and climate they saw
an organisation’s climate as a specific portion of the overall construct. They viewed climate
as embedded into the overall construct of culture, which was seen as large and more abstract.
As far as the individual behaviour in the formation of climate is concerned, saw the
approaches to behaviour. They view culture as being the invisible construct which guides and
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inform individual behaviour, in effect setting an agenda from which climate can develop and
Hooijberg and Petrock (1993) characterize the four corresponding climate type from the point
of view of the competing values. “The group climate could be described as a friendly place to
work where people share a lot of themselves. It is like an extended family. The leaders, or
head of the organisation, are considered to be mentors and, perhaps even parent figures. The
emphasizes the long-term benefits of human resource development with high cohesion and
Schneider (1994) discussed climate in terms of the atmosphere that employees perceive is
what happens to them (and around them) and then draw conclusions about the organisation’s
Schneider, Gunnarson and Niles –Jolly (1994) claim that organisational citizenship behaviour
is essential in creating a climate that allows for organisational success. Perceptions of fairness
and trust, norms of helpfulness and co-operation and fair reward systems based a broad range
Guzzo et al., (1996) argue that ‘sustainable organisational change is most assured when both
the climate – what the organisations’ members experience- and the culture – what the
Burton and Obel (1998) developed a multi contingency model for organisational design.
Organisational climate, which we can describe in terms of tension and resistance to change, is
one of the contingencies, which determine the organisational design, which includes the
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configuration, level of centralization, formalization, complexity, coordination and incentives.
The climate implications for the organization can be summarized using the competing values
framework and in particular for the four climate types: internal process, rational goal,
Eisenhard and Brown (1998) make a competing argument that continuous change is easier to
manage than episode change which requires the Lewinian change process of: unfreeze,
change and refreeze. The idea is to make change the climate of the organisations change itself
Pervaiz, K. Ahmed (1998) titled Culture and Climate for innovation has portrayed that many
companies pay “lip service” to the idea of innovation and stresses that becoming innovative
factors, which make for an effective organisational culture. Looking at the interplay between
various organisational factors and innovation and suggests elements which promote
innovation. Concludes that the most innovative companies of the future will be those, which
Veronique (1998) in his study, the role of the emotional climate in learning organisation, it
becomes increasingly obvious that an emotional climate pervades every level of human
Emotionally and rationality coexist in organisational settings. This research examines how an
emotional climate arises, how it evolves, how it is maintained, and what are the consequences
of a given type of emotional climate. We suggest that it may deeply affect organisational
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inhibition of learning processes. Hence, it ultimately influences performances. We are in the
organisation.
Bruce Kirkcaldy and James A. Athanasou (1999) in his research paper Perceptions of
working climate: a study of German employees highlights that theories of career development
urge an upward and linear progression in career adjustment and satisfaction. The result of the
study of German paraprofessional employees indicated that the perceptions of their working
climate were first accounted for by two separate factors comprising four negative climate
components (job pressure, job dissatisfaction, poor relations with co-workers, and lack of
comparisons yielded significant age by gender interactions for job selected by a decrease in
Joseph Wallace et al., (1999) in their study, the relationship between organisational culture,
organisational climate and managerial values, the findings from an empirical investigation
into the relationship between the organisational culture, climate and managerial values of a
large Australian public sector agency. The relative strengths of four dimensions of culture in
this organisation were measured using Hofstede’s instrument. Added to this were items from
a questionnaire developed by Ryder and Southey, delivered form the Jones and James
instrument measuring psychological climate and providing scores across six specific
questionnaire by Flowers and Hughes, were also incorporated. Results show that Hofstede at
variance with those reports levels of culture within this particular organisation from his
Australian data. Findings indicate a strong link between specific organisational climate items
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dimensions of culture, climate andmanagerial values are also reported. From this, a
Richard, M. Burton et al., (1999) in their study, “Tension and resistance to change in
organisational climate managerial implications for a fast paced world”, Climate is the
an organisation, which is experienced by its members and influences their behavior.” The
organisational climate can be measured in terms of trust, morale, conflict, equity in rewards,
leader credibility, resistance to change and scapegoat. Using a factor analysis, we found that
the organisational climate can be described in two dimensions: “tension” and the resistance to
change for a group of 245 Danish companies. High tension involves strained relationships,
stress and a balance of the combined factors.High resistance to change is a preference for
tomorrow to be like today.Change management has a long history and rests fundamentally
upon Lewin’s three phases: unfreeze, change and re-freeze. More recently, change
management is seen as sense making and the creation of an organisational reality in which
Chandramohan Reddy, T., Gajendran, M. and Gayathri, S. (2000) has made an attempt to
examine the workers dual commitment both organisational and union commitment- in the
context of organisational climate. The study was conducted in four private and four public
commitment and not union commitment. Dual commitment does not exist irrespective of the
Davidson, Michael Cameron Gordon (2000) this study author gathered data from 14 four to
five-star hotels in South - East Queens land, Australia, in an attempt to examine the nature
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and degree of influence organisational climate has upon the performance of hotels. Employee
revenue per available room (REVPAR). The data provided a description of a young,
relatively gender balanced, well-educated and trained work force which received relatively
low levels of financial remuneration and displayed veryhigh levels of turnover. A new
instrument was used to measure the dimensions of organisational climate across the hotels.
This instrument represented a modification of that presented by Ryder and Southey (1990),
which itself was a modification of the 145-item psychological climate questionnaire of Jones
and James (1979). The instrument represented a subset of 70 items of the Ryder and Southey
instrument. Responses to all items within the instrument were on a 7 point anchored scale.
Principal components analysis (PCA) produced results consistent with earlier versions of the
instrument, which had been reported elsewhere. The study analysis described organisational
and support, Professional and organisational esprit, Conflict and ambiguity, Regulations,
organisation and pressure, Job variety, challenge and autonomy, Workgroup co-operation,
friendliness and warmth, and Job standards. These dimensions were judged to be consistent
with those reported earlier by Jones and James, and by Ryder and Southey. Poor support was
found for the first structural model that proposed that employee demographic variables would
affect organisational climate and that organisational climate would affect customer
satisfaction (although the latter link was quite strong). The most important finding of the
study was the support for a second structural model when it was found tha variation in the 7
Satisfaction accounted for 23% of the variation in REVPAR between the hotels. Possible
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extensions of this study using direct measures of customer satisfaction and expanding it to
Deborah Hicks et al., (2000) in their study, Climate for diversity and the effects on career and
climate for diversity” (PCFD). This refers to the degree to which there is an organisational
climate in which human resource diversity is valued and in which employees form diverse
backgrounds feel welcomed and included. It presents a model of the indicators of a positive
climate for diversity and the outcomes for organisations and individuals of such a climate,
especially individual career and organisational attitudes and perceptions. It also presents
variables, which have a moderating effect in the model. The results of research from both
private and public sector organisations, which emphasis on service, indicate that climates for
Neal, A., Griffin, M.A. and Hart, P.M. (2000) the current study examined the effects of
general organisational climate on safety climate and safety performance. As expected, general
organisational climate exerted a significant impact on safety climate, and safety climate in
turn was related to self-reports of compliance with safety regulations and procedures as well
organisational climate on safety performance was mediated by safety climate, while the effect
of safety climate on safety performance was partially mediated by safety knowledge and
motivation.
Peter Kangis, D. and Gordon, S. Williams (2000) the aim of the study was to contribute this
discourse by examining the extent to which “above” and “below” average performing
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companies also exhibit different climate measurements. Interest in organisational climate and
its link with corporate performance is gaining momentum. The survey was conducted on a
companies that performed above or below average for each of these sectors were selected.
Climate dimension measurements collected from staff of the sample companies were
performing above average showed higher values on climate dimensions than those
performing below average. Although a link was shown to exist between climate and
performance, it would be premature to conclude that this connection is causal and, if so, in
which direction.
Peter Kangis and Peter Kareklis (2001) the study was based on managers of a sample of
private and public banks in Greece wassurveyed through the vehicle of agency theory. It was
found thatmanagers in private banks showed greater alignment of interests with those of the
bank, their pay related to outcomes and they were more mobile in their jobs. Private banks
also used more control mechanisms toalign interests of their managers with those of the bank
and displayed a different working climate. Given evolving organisation structures resulting
from deregulation, the convergence of information technology and communications and the
entry of firms from other industries, the implications of the findings for governance are
important.
Roderic, J. Gray (2001) the study establishes a clear association between project outcomes
and the social and management climate in which those projects are implemented. Drawing on
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organisations, project success is shown to decline as the level of personal and environmental
threat perceived by project staff increases. Other organisational characteristics, such as free
satisfactions from the work itself, are all found to be positively associated with successful
project outcomes, whilst organisational change and conflict are negatively associated with
project success.
Chris Watkin and Ben Hubbard (2003) this study is a summary of consulting field research
carried out by Hay Group to answer why leadership motivation matters to the drivers of share
price. The summary also aims to explain how measuring organisational climate can help
leaders better understand the effect they have on the motivations and performance impact of
those they lead. As such it represents the business case for its use by organisations. There are
practical guidelines on how to spot the early warning signs when climate starts to deteriorate;
the key factors leaders need to focus on in getting it right; and how climate measures can be
Michael, C.G. Davidson (2003) in this study the researcher studied, Does organisational
climate add to service in hotels? Examines organisational climate and organisational culture
within a hotel industry framework. An argument put forward that there is a causal link
between good organisational climate and the level of service quality in a hotel. Organisational
climate is also examined within the service quality framework to explore the effects of its
integration into quality initiatives. A conceptual model or organisational climate and service
quality and performance is presented that provides an explanation of the linkage between
organisational culture, organisational climate, service quality, customer satisfaction and hotel
performance.
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Macy’s (1979) case study on the Bolivar Quality of Work Life project was launched as a
result of extremely poor working conditions. The project objectives were to improve
employees work life, and enhance organisational effectiveness. The author claimed that the
programme had resulted in the creation of new in-plant social Structure, processes and
relationship. The cost benefit assessment of the project was positive net savings with
Keating, Pullock and Walsh (1980) analyzed the survey conducted in Ireland and learned that
the trade unionist, managers and employers had believed that changing work organisation and
Peterson and Others (1980) had conducted a study on the QWL programme and found that
the collective aspect of the employees had an influence within the organisation. The
employees who involved in the programme perceived that they have high organisation
Putt and Springer (1980) conducted study with professors in public administration to examine
the QWL. The result indicates that factors involving the immediate working environment are
indeed important and distinct from personal background or movement in the profession.
Donahue (1982) in this study the author identified problems with QWL programmes in US.
They were short term pressure of the recession that wipe out improvements made by the
Sinha (1982) studied the QWL on the basis of job satisfaction, job attractiveness, intrinsic
motivation, control and influence, job involvement and work values in the light of socio-
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cultural background played a very important role in conceptualization of life as well as work
and resultantly affected both quality of working life and quality of life. The result indicates
that the quality of working life and quality of life are two separate identities but they are
interdependent.
Ozley and Ball (1982) labour and management when work together on implementation of
QWL will be more effective. The commitment of management will contribute to positive,
Nadler and Lawler (1983) the study determines the opinion on the success of the QWL. The
study reveals that the success or failure of the QWL depends on the felt need of the project by
the organisation and its commitment towards participative problem solving approaches. The
programs should not be introduced for novelty sake. To be successful with QWL programme
certain steps should be taken like project development at different levels in the organisation,
Copenhaver, Lisa and Guest (1983) the study which was conducted in Ford plant, Saton Ville,
Ohio and Brick plant, Flint, Michigan about the QWL programme where both studies gave an
outcome stating that the commitment to take risk, question common assumptions and avoid
looking for quick – fixes. There was a climate of support form top to down and there was a
conviction that much knowledge and experience rested with rank-and- file workers.
Leventahal (1984) here the author after conducting a study on QWL programme states that
the failure or success of the programme depends on the presence or absence of the trained
facilitator. The study concludes stating good facilitators are trained to describe the behaviours
they observe.
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Sorensen (1985) and others have conducted the study on the QWL programme to promote
was based on a change strategy incorporating the survey feed back process of the action
research model and Likert’s (1977) model of the relationships between causal, intervening
and end-result variables in the change process. The programme has helped to increase
productivity and organisational effectiveness but managerial influence did not diminish with
increased employee participation. The conclusion of the study states the programme could be
Marks et al., (1986) studied the impact of Quality Circle programme on employee quality of
work life attitudes and on productivity and absenteeism behaviour among the direct labour
employees in a manufacturing firm in America. The data revealed a positive relation between
The study concludes stating that the QC participation had led improvements in employee
Parr (1986) and others have evaluated QWL programme at Canada Postal Head Quarters.
This is to improve the poor state of labour relations in the data conversion unit of Canada
Postal Headquarters. The evaluation after the first year showed slight drop in absenteeism.
But there was a slight improvement in motivational potential, growth need strength and job
satisfaction.
Williamson and Alexander (1986) studied the QWL provision in US postal service (USPS)
contracts. Content analysis was used to identify the number of Quality of Work Life clauses
in labour contracts and the same is found to be associated with decrease in productivity and
increase in absenteeism.
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Bocialetti (1987) tested whether employees were benefiting, from QWL process. The
longitudinal study with the gap of 18 months revealed that employees with relatively
seniority benefited more than and sometimes at the expenses of workers with relatively high
seniority. The data interpreted as the senior workers suffered negative effects while junior
Bushe (1988) has studied multiple case study and comparative analysis to improve labour
management relations through joint management quality of wok life projects. The result of
the study states that the quality of the LMCs (Labour Management Committees) created to
Davis Keith and Newstorm (1989) could perceive wide range of QWL activities as open
participation in job design. According to them, emphasis should be placed on employee skill
development, the reduction of occupational stress and the development of more co-operative
Krim and Arthur (1989) conducted a study to evaluate the joint labour –management co-
operation and have found that politics can enter into a public sector QWL programme. The
consequences of the programme would make the programme and the initiator of the political
behaviour.
Manz and Grothe (1991) where they conducted a nation wide survey in a large, US based
the younger generation below 20 years were significantly lower than that of their order age
group employees.
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Fields and Thacker (1992) studied the feedback of implementation of a joint union
management quality of Work Life programme whether any changes in union and
organisational commitment. The result was that the company commitment increased only
when participants perceived QWL efforts as successful, but trade union commitment
Yousuf (1996) conducted a study to find out the QWL of the Doctors. The studies revealed
that when works were found routine and boring, the job was also considered frustrating.
Those who were happy in their personal life were happy in their friend’s circles. The
successful of work lives found to be related to the quality of work performance. The study
found that the supervision were good, their present job also had given a sense of
accomplishment. The conclusion of the study was the better socio-technical system along
with better QWL would certainly offer best health services to ailing mankind. Ekramul
Hoque, M. and Alinoor Rahman (1999) They attempted to compare the QWL of industrial
workers according to the nature of the organisations and to measure whether there is any
significant relationship among quality of work life, job behaviour and demographic variables
of the workers. The result revealed workers of private sector textile mills perceived
significantly higher QWL than in the public sector; QWL has significant negative correlation
with absenteeism and accident and QWL has significant positive correlation with
performance.
When we look at many organisations we find that many of them are not able to achieve their
goals. The major reason for this is poor organisational climate. In this rapid changing
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scenario of organizations context, structure, concepts, procedure, policies, rules, technology
the climate of the organisation changes in adopting the recent trends. The new trends in
management will influence the employees working in the organisation, which reflect in
determining organisational climate. Such thought induced to go in for this research and to get
first hand information. Organisational climate is the perception of the employees feel to work
place depends on people’s perception. This study is focused on how the present organisation
is able to cope with the rapidly changing environment and to identify the present situation at
the workplace. This study will be helpful for the organization to develop good climate by
commitment and morale, training & development and direction. The present study attempts to
by them and the quality of work life of the employees. The researcher with rich experience in
the field undertook this project with confidence. The researcher feels that justice has been
CONCLUSION:
The survey of the related studies reveal that majority of studies conducted on organisational
climate reveals that rapid changes in the pursuit of the technological changes neglected the
personnel of the organisation which caused low morale of the employees and resulted in
many conflicts and disputes. To avoid such untoward incidents, at present, every organisation
performance and efficiency from the employees. The organisations are interpreted as a 118
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dynamic process, since it is simply a mechanism for coordinated behaviour. It is the process
of people having in a rationally coordinated fashion. It also found that most of the studies are
carried out in developed and developing countries. It is also noted that there are only few
CHAPTER III
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Introduction
refers to the task of drawing inferences from the collected facts from an
the usefulness and utility of the research findings lie in them. This chapter
analyses and interprets the data collected from the respondents with use of Pie
This variable was studied to find out whether there is cordial relationship that exists
betwixt the employees 87 % of the employees are highly satisfactory about the
relationship patterns and 13 % percent of the employees are satisfactory.
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13%
87%
FIGURE.1
This variable was studied to find out the interest of superiors in their subordinates
work, 70% are highly satisfactory and 30 % are satisfactory with the interest level of
their superiors in their task.
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30%
70%
FIGURE.2
JOB SECURITY
This variable was studied to find out the job security of the employees 90 % are highly
satisfactory and 10 % satisfactory about their job security.
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10%
90%
FIGURE.3
JOB SECURITY
This variable was studied to find out the use of talents and competencies in their job 70
% of the employees are highly satisfactory and 30% of the employees are satisfactory.
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30%
70%
FIGURE.4
This variable was studied to find the satisfactory level of the roles and responsibilities
that employees have in their job ,87 % of them are highly satisfactory and 13 % are
satisfactory about their roles and responsibility.
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13%
87%
FIGURE.5
This variable was studied to find out the recognition that employees have in their
job,93% are highly satisfactory 7 % are satisfactory.
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7%
93%
FIGURE.6
This variable was studied to find out how confident the superiors are with their
subordinates 84 % of them strongly agree, 10 % of them disagree and 6% of them agree
to the statement.
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10%
6%
84%
FIGURE.7
This variable was studied to find out the interaction level of the superiors and
subordinates ,60 % of them strongly agree,20 % of them agree and 20 % of them
disagree.
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20%
20% 60%
FIGURE.8
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This variable was studied to find out whether management and supervisors facilitate in
the work process 82 % strongly agree,10 % strongly disagree and 8 % agree to the
statement.
10%
8%
82%
FIGURE.9
This variable was studied to find out whether management rewards the employee for
his achievements or not, 85 % of them strongly agree, 5% of them agree, 5 % of them
strongly disagree 5 % of them disagree.
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5%
5%
5%
85%
FIGURE.10
This variable was studied to find out whether management provides opportunity to
work with out close supervision ,70 % of them strongly agree,20 % of them disagree
and 10% of them disagree to the statement.
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20%
10%
70%
FIGURE.11
This variable was studied to find out the career planning initiatives and the satisfactory
level of the employees , 80 % of them strongly agree, 10% of the agree, 10% strongly
disagree to the statement.
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10%
10%
80%
FIGURE.12
This variable was studied to find out whether employees receive necessary training for
which 95 % of the respondents strongly agree and a minor portion of the respondents
agree to the statement.
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5%
95%
FIGURE. 13
This variable was studied to find out the satisfactory level of the grievance handling
process for which 95 % of them strongly agree and 5 % agree to the statement.
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5%
95%
Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree
FIGURE.14
This variable was studied to find out the information dissemination process I the
organization and for this variable 75% of them strongly agree, 20% of them disagree
and 5% of them strongly disagree.
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5%
20%
75%
Strongly Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree
FIGURE.15
This variable was studied to find out the level of importance given to employees at all
stage in the organization for which 60 % of them strongly disagree and only 40% agree
to the statement.
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40%
60%
FIGURE.16
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This variable was studied to find out the level of information passage/dissemination to
the employees for which 67% of them strongly agree, 20% of them agree,10% of them
disagree and 3% of them strongly disagree to the statement.
10% 3%
20%
67%
FIGURE.17
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This variable was studied to find out the decision making process of the organization for
which 8% strongly agree,82 % agree and 10 % disagree to the above statement.
10% 8%
82%
FIGURE.18
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This variable was studied to find out whether the ideas of the employees are taken
seriously by the management for which 80% of them strongly disagree, 20% of them
agree to the statement.
20%
80%
FIGURE.19
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I AM GIVEN OPPORTUNITY TO CONTRIBUTE IDEAS / SUGGESTIONS FOR
SOLVING ANY PROBLEM IN SIDE ORGANIZATION.
This variable was studied to find out whether opportunities are given to employees to
contribute for which 76 % of them strongly agree,10% of them agree and 14% of them
disagree to the statement.
14%
10%
76%
FIGURE.20
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MANAGEMENT INVOLVES SUB-ORDINATES IN MAJOR DECISION MAKING
PROCESS.
This variable was studied to find out whether subordinates as well are involved in the
decision making process for which 60% of them strongly agree, 20% strongly
disagree,10% disagree and 10 % of them agree to the statement.
20%
10%
60%
10%
FIGURE.21
CANTEEN FACILITIES
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This variable was studied to find out the satisfactory level of the canteen facilities
obliged for which 90 % of the respondents have stated that they are highly satisfied and
10 % of the respondents have stated that they are dissatisfied.
10%
90%
FIGURE.22
CANTEEN FACILITIES
REST ROOM
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This variable was studied to find out the satisfactory level of the rest rooms obliged for
which 85 % of the respondents are highly satisfied and 15 % of the respondents are
dissatisfied.
15%
85%
FIGURE.23
REST ROOM
RECREATIONAL FACILITIES
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This variable was studied to find out the satisfactory level of the recreational facilities
provided to the employees for which 94 % of the respondents are highly satisfied and 6
% of the respondents are dissatisfied.
6%
94%
FIGURE.24
RECREATIONAL FACILITIES
HOUSING FACILITIES
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This variable was studied to find out the satisfactory level of the housing facilities
provided for which cent percent of the employees are highly satisfied with it.
100%
Highly satisfied
FIGURE.25
HOUSING FACILITIES
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FIRST – AID BOX
This variable was studied to find out the satisfactory level of the first aid box obliged to
the employees for which cent percent of the employees are happy with the first aid box.
100%
Highly satisfied
FIGURE.26
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MEDICAL FACILITIES.
This variable was studied to find out the satisfactory level of the medical facilities
obliged by the authority to its employees for which cent percent of the employees are
happy and contended with the medical facilities provided for the employees.
100%
Strongly Agree
FIGURE.27
MEDICAL FACILITIES.
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CHAPTER V
INTRODUCTION
This chapter deals with the main findings and suggestions of the research. These findings are
derived from the analysis and interpretation of factual data that has been collected from the
This section of the research is a detailed report incorporating results of the research study and
Though the organizational climate at ARS Metals Pvt. Ltd, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India is
good to face the future requirements its mandate that the organization follows apt strategies to
keep the climate healthy. The researcher has provided viable suggestions to enhance and
MAIN FINDINGS
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87 % of the respondents are highly satisfactory with the cordial relationship with their
colleagues.
70% of the respondents are highly satisfactory with the interest their immediate
90% of the respondents are highly satisfactory about the job security they have in
their profession.
70% of the respondents are highly satisfactory about the use of talents and
87% of the respondents are highly satisfactory about the roles and responsibilities
93% of the respondents are highly satisfactory about the recognition they have in their
job.
84% of the respondents strongly agree to the statement that their superiors have
60% of the respondents strongly agree to the statement that interaction between their
70% of the respondents strongly agree to the statement that management provides
80% of the respondents strongly agree to the statement that management cares for
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95 % of the respondents strongly agree to the statement that to upgrade their skills
75 % of the respondents strongly agree to the statement that they receive all
60 % of the respondents agree to the statement that they feel that their ideas,
67 % of the respondents strongly agree to the statement that they are informed about
80 % of the respondents strongly disagree to the statement that the management never
76 % of the respondents strongly agree to the statement that if they are given
organization.
SUGGESTIONS:
Managers play a key role in creating the workplace environment. Managers should
Use every possible opportunity to improve the business literacy of staff by providing
information on the strategic context in which the department operates, its key
objectives and strategies and the links to workgroup activity Demonstrates by their
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actions that they do not require Absolute control by trusting staff to get their jobs
done.
Upon Themselves.
Let self managed teams and individual staff manages their own work within
reasonable and agreed limits. This can be demonstrated not changing decisions,
Correspondence or reports unless the reasons are Clearly explained and the discussion
Support the decisions made by staff. Instead of Rejecting a decision, asks how the
staff member came to that decision. If the manager then agrees, the Decision is
explain Why the decision cannot be supported Devolves decision making to the
relevant level e.g. Encourages staff to address problems relating to their Own job
responsibilities is available to provide advice and support and is fair in sharing their
time according to the needs of staff e.g. Doesn’t take calls during meetings with staff
Provides opportunities to participate in work group Decisions ensures teams have the
capacity and authority to make decisions so that they can quickly respond to problems
groups ie. Staff working together to reflect on project progress and outcomes and
what could have been improved and reporting back to the group conducts regular
meetings with both staff and the local models the department’s values and behaviors
meetings, in other forums and with colleagues provides a clear idea of what types of
behaviors are acceptable and unacceptable and why ensures that poor behavior is not
rewarded is open to discussion and negotiation deals with personality conflicts in the
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work groups or Between work groups is careful not to allow the work group to
develop a siege or victim mentality as this will impact on quality of work life and
business performance does not allow the work group morale to suffer because of
management inaction understands and promotes that staff do not always need to get
on personally but they do need to get on professionally is strong enough to ask for
advice if necessary focuses on the present and the future and not on the past and past
group outcomes. Understands that there is not just one answer to A problem and that
they don’t always have the right answer is consistent and delivers. If they say they
will do something then they do it assists staff to do their work efficiently by having a
quick turn around time on areas of comment or advice values staff problem solving by
showing that it is all right to make the occasional mistake puts on an occasional
morning tea or other activity to celebrate birthdays and other key milestones.
Encourage staff to organize such events and makes time available to attend the effort
to get to know about staff and something about their lives outside work goes into ‘bat’
for staff on issues the staff see as Important. Where necessary advocates on their
management decisions to staff and does not allow an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality to
develop presents information in a positive manner so that staff are better able to rise to
the challenge takes care of their own professional development and seeks personal
and work group improvement allows staff to develop improvement actions important
to them based on climate and morale results implements some of the other activities
outlined in this guide to enhance work group skills, interpersonal skills and work
group environment.
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ITS BETTER TO IMPLEMENT ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE ASSESSMENT
employees regarding the status of their organizations. This data gathering and analysis system
has the potential to obtain valuable information regarding the relative effectiveness and
efficiency of an organization. There are multiple ways organizations can be surveyed, but an
effective method may be to use tools that allow employees to remain anonymous, which may
Step 1:
Determine analysis areas. Prior to beginning any organizational climate assessment, leaders
and managers within the organization must determine what information they are trying to
learn. They should examine their core competencies and try to find areas where they think
improvements can be made. The assessment tools can be very broad-based, covering areas
to name a few. If the organization wanted a more specific focus they could make the
assessment more focused. For example, a software engineering company may determine that
production costs and time to deployment have increased. Leaders and managers within the
company could design assessment questionnaires which will reveal information relating to
Step 2:
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Determine methodology for data collection. There are multiple was to collect data, such as
face-to-face interviews, phone calls and focus groups. Sometimes employees may be more
respondents to take the surveys behind the privacy of their own work or home computer. This
may put them at ease by making them feel they can be more honest and open due to the truly
Step 3:
Build vs. Buy Decision. Once the analysis areas are determined and the methodology is
decided, leaders and managers within the organization should decide if it is more effective
and efficient for them to conduct the analysis themselves or hire an outside consultant to do
this. Oftentimes organizations lack the manpower, time or knowledge to conduct this type of
analysis, which is why they frequently turn to third-party consultants to conduct their data
collection efforts. Additionally, employees may feel that an outside consultant is more
neutral, which may help to elicit more open and honest feedback. Consultants often have the
resources and experience to develop the assessment questionnaires and analyze the feedback.
In many situations, they are much less biased than the organization being analyzed.
Step 4:
Deploy the surveys. Once the surveys are developed they should be sent out to all desired
recipients. This can be done with emails to multiple employees within the organization. The
accurate assessment of the organization and to help diagnose potential problems. Other
options for deployment of the surveys are to post a link on the company’s intranet, if one
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exists. The survey period should be limited to a specific amount of time and participants
should be encouraged to complete the survey in the time allotted to help ensure timely
Step 5:
Analyze the results and implement solutions. One of the goals of this type of analysis
program is determine areas for improvement and implement solutions. Consultants should be
able to provide leadership and management staff with all the answers from the surveys,
including constructive comments from employees. This feedback can show the organizational
leadership team which areas may need to be improved, ultimately helping them to improve
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CHAPTER VI
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
climate, meaning that they take the long run view of climate as an organisational asset. Many
sense. The individual‟s perceptions of what are “out there” acts as a moderating or
In view of the above discussion, the findings and their implications should be taken into
account in the design of human resource programs as well as in the making of policy. Due
attention has to be paid to the value systems of the population as a whole, as well the
The findings of the study also suggests that, similar studies may be taken up on several
organisations in the same industry at a time to examine the variations in perceptions across
organisations in an industry. There exists a gap between what an employee wants and has.
Further studies may explore the relationship between what an employee perceives and what
his superior things the employee perceives. Thereby filling the gap between what is expected
and what is resulted. This study merely explored organizational climate in the ARS
organization should provide necessary facilities, conductive organizational climate and take
actions that cater for the welfare of the workers to improve organizational commitment. In
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sum, the construction of work environments moderates the relationship between certain
communication, managerial support, and the work itself), and employee affective attitudes
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