Climate is widely defined as the perception of formal and informal organizational policies, practices, and procedures (Reichers & Schneider, 1990). However, the definition of climate and the focus of climate research have evolved over the years since Lewin's early studies of experimentally created social climates (1951; Lewin et al., 1939). Lewin and his colleagues were interested in examining the climate or atmosphere created by different leadership styles and the consequences these different climates had on the behaviors and attitudes of group membersin this case, young boys.
From a theoretical perspective, the relationship between people and their social environment was framed in the formulation: Behavior is a function of person and the environment (Lewin, 1951). Hence, the environment is created by or studied as a construct that is separate from the people who operate
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within it (Dennison, 1996; Roberts, Hulin, & Rousseau, 1978). Climate is an abstraction of the environmenta gestalt that is based on the patterns of experiences and behaviors that people perceive in the situation (Schnieder, Bowen, Ehrhart, & Holcombe, 2000). The agents (e.g., leaders, management) or factors that create the climate (e.g., structure, strategy, practices) are either assumed or not directly studied (Dennison, 1996). Rather, the focus is on a climate that is perceived by employees yet can be measured and studied separately from individuals, and on the impact this climate has on the people within it. This perspective has continued to dominate much of climate research.
Following the work of Lewin, research in the late 1950s through the early 1970s emphasized the human context of organizations, with particular emphasis on organizational effectiveness outcomes as well as the impact on attitudinal outcomes (Schneider et al., 2000). For example, a number of theorists (e.g., Argyris, 1964; Likert, 1967; McGregor, 1960) suggested that the social context, climate, or atmosphere created in the workplace have important consequences. Researchers proposed that organizational productivity was achieved through employee satisfaction and attention to workers' physical and emotional needs; the conditions created in the workplace influenced the extent to which an employee was satisfied, gave his or her services wholeheartedly to the organization, and performed up to potential in patterns of activity that were directed toward achieving the organization's objectives. Similarly, a number of researchers documented consistency between climates and the needs or personalities of individuals within them (e.g., J. R. George & Bishop, 1971; Pervin, 1967) and showed the impact that climates have on the performance and attitudes of individuals that work within them (e.g., Litwin & Stringer, 1968; Pritchard & Karasick, 1973; Schneider & Bartlett, 1968,1970). Litwin and Stringer further articulated a framework in which climate was a mediator between the effects of organizational system factors and individual motivation and subsequent behavior, while others tested the notion the climate was a moderator of relationships between individual differences and individual performance (e.g., Schneider & Bartlett, 1968).
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Controversies and Resolutions
Despite climate's strong historical foundation, the concept was still somewhat ill defined and as work continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the construct became plagued by controversies, ambiguities, and methodological difficulties (Kozlowski & Doherty, 1989). These issues centered around the objective versus perceptual nature of climate, the
appropriate level of analysis for addressing climate, and the aggregation of climate perceptions.
Objective versus Perceptual Climate and Levels
of Analysis
In contrast to the approach based on Litwin's work (that climate was driven largely by leadership and practices), Payne and Pugh (1976) suggested that climate was produced by the objective context and structure of the organizationfor example, the organization's size, hierarchy, span of control, resources, and rate of turnover. These authors concluded, based on a review of research, that relationships between structure and climate were modest at best. Yet, controversy continued over whether climate was an objective organizational property or a subjective and perceptual one (Taguiri & Litwin, 1968). A related controversy centered on whether climate was an individual or organizational attribute (e.g., Guion, 1973).
To resolve this issue, a distinction between psychological climate, in which climate is conceptualized and measured at the individual level, and organizational climate, in which climate is conceptualized and studied as an organizational variable, was proposed (Hellriegel & Slocum, 1974; L. R. James & Jones, 1974). This proposition extended the original Lewinian basis for climate to include interactionist and cognitive theoretical perspectives. That is, climate was conceptualized as sets of perceptually based descriptions of organizational features, events, and processes. At the individual level, these perceptions represent cognitive interpretations of the context and arise from individuals' interactions with context and with each other (e.g., L. R. James, Hater, Gent, & Bruni, 1978; L. R. James & Jones, 1974; A. P. Jones & James, 1979). Thus, while early researchers tended to define climate as enduring organizational or situational characteristics that were perceived by organizational members (e.g., Schneider & Bartlett, 1968), more attention was now given to individuals' perceptions than to organizational characteristics, and psychological meaningfulness became an explicit part of the definition (Rentsch, 1990).
A related concern was raised about individual-level climate perceptions, questioning whether climate is a measure of affective responses similar to job satisfaction (e.g., Guion, 1973; Payne & Pugh, 1976). This issue was resolved through a series of papers showing that climate and satisfaction are conceptually distinct and the constructs are not necessarily correlated (e.g., LaFollette & Sims, 1975; Payne, Fineman, & Wall, 1976; Schneider & Snyder, 1975).
Nevertheless, debate continued into the 1980s over whether organizational climate should be measured through objective features of organizations (Glick, 1985, 1988) or through
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assessments of how individuals perceive the organization (L. R. James et al., 1988). L. R. James and his colleagues (e.g., L. R. James et al, 1988; L. A. James & James, 1989) argued that because organizational climate arises out of the cognitive appraisals, social constructions, and sense-making of individuals, measures of organizational climate should rely on the individual as the basic unit of theory and thus it is appropriate and productive to describe organizations in psychological terms. That is, since organizational climate is fundamentally an individual-level construct, the unit of measurement must begin at the individual level. When consensus among individuals in their perceptions of climate can be demonstrated, the perceptions can be meaningfully aggregated to represent subunit or organizational climate (L. R. James, 1982). The distinction between psychological climate as an individual perception and organizational climate as a shared perception, and the appropriateness of using aggregated individual perceptions to represent a higher level (e.g., organizational) climate, are widely accepted today (Schneider et al., 2000).
The formation of climate has been traditionally regarded as primarily an individual-level process based on sense-making and cognitive representations of meaning inherent in organizational features and processes (Schneider, 1983). This process, however, also was viewed as interactive and reciprocal (Ashforth, 1985; Kozlowski & Doherty, 1989; Schneider, 1983). Because similar types of individuals are attracted to the same sort of organizational settings, are selected by similar types of organizational settings, are socialized in similar ways, are exposed to similar features within the setting, and share their interpretations of the setting with others, consensus among climate perceptions of individuals in the same setting develops.
Aggregation
Although the definition of organizational climate as a summary perception became widely accepted, concerns were raised about the reliability of aggregated data and how to demonstrate consensus, or shared perceptions. For many years, attitudinal- like scales have been used to capture an organization's climate and individual data aggregated to represent the climate (Ashkanasy, Wilderom, & Peterson, 2000). A great deal of attention has been devoted to the aggregation problem in climate, and the fundamental controversies have been largely resolved (cf. Bliese, 2000; Klein et al., 2000).
The Content of Climate
Climate research has been content dominated through attempts to determine the dimensions of the climates. Early
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work often focused on global or molar concepts of climate, with the assumption that individuals develop global or summary perceptions of their organization (e.g., L. R. James & Jones, 1974; Schneider & Bartlett, 1968). Furthermore, early attention was devoted to the study of multiple climates within an organization. Research and rhetoric surrounded attempts to delineate different dimensions or define a set of dimensions thought to best represent the most important aspects of organizational climate (e.g., Campbell, Dunnette, Lawler, & Weick, 1970; Likert, 1967; Litwin & Stringer, 1968).
By the end of the 1970s, the number of dimensions identified as relevant for climate had grown quite large and included facets such as structure, reward, risk, warmth, support, standards, conflict, identity, democraticness, autocraticness, supportiveness, innovativeness, peer relations, cooperation, cohesion, pressure, and many more. New dimensions were being added to the conceptualization of climate each time a researcher thought climate might be useful for understanding some interesting phenomenon (Schneider, 2000). At the same time, many researchers were more concerned with organizational effectiveness than with climate per se, with climate being used as a way to understand why some organizations were more effective than others (Reichers & Schneider, 1990), even though critical reviews at the time concluded that there were only weak relationships between organizational climate and organizational effectiveness (e.g., Campbell et al., 1970; Payne &Pugh, 1976).
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Schneider (1975) concluded that the molar concept of climate was too amorphous, inclusive, and multifaceted to be useful; that is, attempting to describe organizational situations simultaneously along 10 or so generic facets has no focus, and thus relationships to some specific outcome will be modest at best (Schneider et al., 2000). He proposed that climate be conceptualized and studied as a specific construct that has a particular referent or strategic focus, indicative of the organization's goals (Reichers & Schneider, 1990; Schneider). That is, climate research should shift from a molar, abstract perspective that includes everything that happens in an organization to linking climate to a specific, even strategic, criterion or outcomea climate for something, such as a climate for service (Schneider, 1975, 1990). The underlying premise is similar to that in attitude research (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1975) in that the predictor and criterion variables not only should be conceptually linked, but also should be operationalized at the same level of specificity (Schneider & Reichers, 1983). The notion of a strategic criterion or a climate-for approach appears to be gaining wide acceptance, addressing issues such as climates for safety (Zohar, 2000), service (Schneider, 1990), sexual harassment
