Dear all,

Can anyone throw light on the difference between: Organisational Culture and Organisational Climate ?

Smita

Hi Smita,

Organizational Climate is the outcome of culture. While culture is what has been the precedence in the organization, its history, people management style, leadership, performance evaluation system etc. How the culture is perceived by the people and the out come of which is in the behavior of the people, the way they respond to things etc is the organizational climate. To improve the climate in an organization, the culture of the organization has to be attached which is below the waters.

Regards

Roger

Hello Team,

Just few thoughts from my side.. 

Organisation Climate: ...aggregate of the perceptions prevailing in the Organisation...not a molecular concept..............rather it is a construct..means a large scale prevalence of perceptions........

Organisation Culture:.....underlying beliefs and values operating in a group...........

Traditionally ..look from this angle:..in your home what is prevailing is culture..........but the immediate behaviours are the climate we create...same thing applies to individual...it's the people who create that climate...

The issue is...whether there should be two constructs in the Organisation or not?

Waiting for others to join...........

Cheers

sid

There is a small difference in the Two. In short Organizational Culture is the general common habits or practices followed in an organization such as casual or formal. Sitting late in the evening or flexi timings. It reflects as how one should behave in an organization. Thus a new entrant in an organization is able to adapt to the Organizational Culture or he becomes a loner and may quit in the long Run. This is precisely the reason personal interviews are conducted during the selection process, to understand whether an individual is a fit or a miss-match to the Organizational Culture.

On the other hand an Organizational Climate gives us an idea about the vertical and horizontal relationship, such as 1)the the relationship between the workers and the management- whether cordial or tense; 2)Managers-Staff relationship etc. In fact The Organizational Climate give rise to the various Organizational Cultures. Organizational Climate is a stable phenomenon and difficult to change while Organizational Culture is temporary attribute of an organization which changes with the type of Employees. Also we should note that no two Organizations can have the Same Organizational Climate, although organizations of same Industry and similar size have similar Organizational Climate. On the contrary we often witness organizations with almost same rganizational Culture where may be average age of the employees are similar.

Org climate are the external manifestations of the interface between org culture & current impact of org realities. The climate changes relatively faster than culture. culture is fairly constant ,it is a set of assumptions which the org has acquired over a period of time in its struggle of survival/growth. ( refer French & bell-O.D. text book for defn of culture. Climate is more transient. here & now. Hope this clarifies.

Shantanuji

Culture is the conventionalized behavior our society (or group) that influences our actions. Culture has to do with the management styles: leadership, communication, decision making, etc. eg. leadership - autocratic, democratic, bureaucratic, communication - one way or two way, decision making participative or not, etc.

Climate is the human environment within which employees do their work. It has to do with the humanistic approach the superiors adopts . Elements of climate include: quality of leadership, trust, communication, meaningful work, responsibility, fairness in reward & recognition, reasonableness (in job allocation and pressures for output), controls, structural equality of opportunity, involvement, etc.

You will see certain elements overlapping. Both climate and culture can be measured and developed.