Organizational Climate And Organizational Culture

The concept of the learning environment is often used interchangeably with those of climate and culture. However, organizational research has tried harder to conceptualize these notions, thus resulting in the concepts being exposed to a more prevalent and rigorous theoretical and empirical debate than in learning research(Palmgren 2016).

Organizational climate and organizational culture are two alternative constructs for conceptualizing the way people experience and describe their work settings (including not only businesses but also schools and governments).

Within organizational research, climate and culture are regarded as concepts describing a subset of the organization’s internal environment. The difference between organizational culture

Generally, quantitative survey-based research taps into the features of an organization’s climate whereas qualitative and interpretive research delves into the nature of an organization’s culture. A conspicuous difference between the two concepts relates to questions of epistemology and methodology. Climate-orientated investigators generally tend to assess knowledge of climates in relation to other climates and aim to compare. However, most culture-orientated investigators are mainly concerned with valuing the contextualized knowledge of the culture under study(Scott et al. 2003).

Organizational climate and culture offer overlapping perspectives for understanding the kinds of integrative experiences people have in work settings—or in any organizational settings. The constructs address the meaning people attach to their experiences of how the organization works (process climates), the strategic foci the organization has (strategic climates), and the values they attribute to the setting (culture), all in attempts to make sense of their experiences(Alvesson

In reaction to this predominantly post-positivist approach, there was a subsequent increase in studies of organizational culture, which could be regarded as a sign of an “anti-climate movement.” This was articulated by different scholars who asserted that whatever culture might be, it definitely was not climate.” (Alvesson 2013). Although undisputed definitions of climate and culture are lacking, it is generally assumed that organizational culture is linked to “deep,” taken-for-granted assumptions that emerge through more “superficial,” observable behaviours and artefacts (Palmgren