ORGANIZATION CLIMATE AND CULTURE
The Climate of your Organization is the State of its Health
How your employees feel about their jobs, their supervisors, their peers, top management, and many other factors affects their individual productivity, and collectively the ability of the organization to achieve its objectives.
Without a formal process, finding out about employee attitudes usually relies on the manager's instincts or the employee's own willingness to communicate upward. But managerial instinct rarely provides the kind of hard data needed for decision ‑ making. And most employees are hesitant to communicate anything but positive information to their supervisors.
The formal process generally involves using a climate survey or questionnaire, and you have probably learned that there are lots of them out there.
Organizational climate measures attempts to assess organizations in terms of dimensions that are thought to capture or describe perceptions about the climate.
1.Structure ‑ feelings about constraints and freedom to act and the degree of formality or informality in the working atmosphere.
2.Responsibility ‑ the feeling of being trusted to carry out important work.
3.Risk ‑ the sense of riskiness and challenge in the job and in the organization; the relative emphasis on taking calculated risks or playing it safe.
4.Warmth ‑ the existence of friendly and informal social groups.
5.Support ‑ the perceived helpfulness of managers and co‑workers; the emphasis (or lack of emphasis) on mutual support.
6.Standards ‑ the perceived importance of implicit and explicit goals and performance standards; the emphasis on doing a good job; the challenge represented in personal and team goals.
7.Conflict ‑ the feeling that managers and other workers want to hear different opinions; the emphasis on getting problems out into the open rather than smoothing them over or ignoring them.
8.Identity ‑ the feeling that you belong to a company; that you are a valuable member of a working team.
9.autonomy ‑ the perception of self‑determination with respect to work procedures, goals and priorities;
10.cohesion ‑ the perception of togetherness or sharing within the organization setting, including the willingness of members to provide material risk;
11.trust ‑ the perception of freedom to communicate openly with members at higher organizational levels about sensitive or personal issues, with the expectation that the integrity of such communications will not be violated;
12.resource ‑ the perception of time demands with respect to task competition and performance standards;
13.support ‑ the perception of the degree to which superiors tolerate members' behaviour, including willingness to let members learn from their mistakes without fear of reprisal;
14.recognition ‑ the perception that members' contributions to the organization are acknowledged;
15.fairness ‑ the perception that organizational policies are non‑arbitrary or capricious;
16.innovation ‑ the perception that change and creativity are encouraged, including
risk‑taking into new areas where the member has little or no prior experience.
================================================== =====================
ORGANIZATION CULTURE
HOW AN ORGANIZATION's CULTURE CAN BE KNOWN ?
Organization culture can be a set of key values , assumptions,
understandings and norms that is shared by members of an
organization.
Organization values are fundamental beliefs that an organization
considers to be important , that are relatively stable over time,
and they have an impact on employees behaviors and attitudes.
Organization Norms are shared standards that define what
behaviors are acceptable and desirable within organization.
Shared assumptions are about how things are done
in an organization.
Understandings are coping with internal / external problems
uniformly.
=================================================
LEVELS OF ORGANIZATION CULTURE
LEVEL 1---VISIBLE, that can be seen at the surface level
-dress codes
-office layout [ open office]
-symbols
-slogans
-ceremonies[ monthly / annual awards/long service/birthdays etc.
etc etc
LEVEL 2- INVISIBLE , that can be cannot be seen but only felt.
-stories about people performance
-symbols [ flag, trademark, logos, etc]
-corporate mission statements
-recruitment/selection [ methods used]
-fairness in treatment
-social equality
-risk taking in business deals
-formality in approach
-discipline
-autonomy for departments
-responsiveness to communication
-empowerment of staff.
etc etc.
===============================================
hope this is useful to you.
regards
LEO LINGHAM