Organizational Climate Compare and Contrast Organizational (Command)

Organizational Climate

Compare and Contrast organizational (command) climate with organizational culture.

Organizational climate is the recurring patterns of behavior, attitudes and feelings that characterize life in an organization or company. It is used to describe the dimensions of the environment at work. The factors that determine organizational climate are leadership, organizational structure, historical forces, standards of accountability, standards of behavior, communication, rewards, trust, commitment, vision and strategies, and organizational correctiveness.

Leadership is a factor since the leader has a powerful influence on the expectations and manners of everyone in the company. The leader needs to strategize and methodize the alterations needed to compete in the future as well as the best ways to integrate everyone in the company to gain commitment. Organizational structure is important since how the company organizes itself is a reflection as to what it considers critical to its success and reflects the commitment and values of the employees. Historical forces have an impact on the organizational structure that develops over time and influence its climate. If the company has neglected innovation and resisted change, the culture and climate is impacted greatly. Standards of accountability are defined as what will be observed and heard while communication is a significant factor of desired behaviors and is measured by the company's communication patterns. The lack of acceptable behavior triumph corrupts the corporate organizational climate. Rewards measure competencies in a tangible and constructive feedback helps to reinforce the purpose in building and reaching goals and objectives and a company that is value driven. Trust reflects the feelings of mutual respect and support within a company and it is high when employees sense their input is important and valued, support is constructive, and actions are supported by others. Commitment reflects an employees' pride in their organization and the extent of their support in the future of the company. Vision and strategies are statements of the company's desired future, and the goals and priorities of an organization's vision, the climate and culture will reflect such over time.

Organizational culture is a system of shared meaning where culture is the social glue that helps hold the organization together. It is the basic pattern of shared assumptions, values and beliefs considered to be the correct way of thinking about and acting on problems and opportunities facing the organization. The characteristics of organization culture include innovation and risk taking, attention to detail, outcome orientation, people orientation, team orientation, aggressiveness, and stability. Organizational culture aims to provide a sense of identity for members, enhances commitment to the organization's mission, clarifies and reinforces standards of behavior, defines the boundary between one organization and others, and enhances the stability of the social system.

The effects of organizational culture are organizational performance, length of employment, and person or organization fit. Employees learn in an organizational culture by artifacts, values, assumptions, and beliefs. Artifacts are observable symbols and signs of an organization's culture while values are reasons given by an organization for the way things are done. Assumptions are beliefs taken for granted by the organizational members while beliefs represent the individual's perception of reality. Organizational culture starts with a founder who has an idea of a new enterprise, the founder creates a core group with one or more key people with common vision, the core groups begins to act in a concert to create an organization, and others are brought into the organization and a common history is built. The two concepts are similar since they both deal with social context in organizations and both effects the behavior of people. Climate is based on psychology, it refers to the current situation in a company, and is easier to assess and change. Culture is based on anthropology and sociology; it refers to the history and tradition. Organizational culture is deep and stable while climate involves feelings that characterize life in the organization.

2. Compare and Contrast situational awareness with situational understanding.

Situational awareness is the awareness of environmental elements with respect to time or space. It is to be aware of what is happening in the environment to understand how information, events, and people's own actions will affect goals and objectives, whether it is in the future or immediately. The widely accepted definition of situational awareness is the Endsley's definition, which is the perception of elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future.

There are three levels of situational awareness, which are perception as level 1, comprehension as level 2, and projection as level 3. Perception is the first step in order to perceive and understand the status, attributes, and dynamics of the elements in the organization or environment. It involves the process of monitoring, detection, and recognition. Comprehension involves the synthesis of the disconnected elements from perception via recognition, interpretation, and evaluation. During this level, situational awareness involves the combination of information to comprehend the impact of people's goals. Projection is the highest level of situational awareness and involves projecting future actions of the elements in the environment. It is reached through knowledge and the dynamics of the element of the situation. As well, it is determining how such variables will affect the future of the organization.

Situational understanding is the product of applying analysis and judgment to the organization's situational awareness. This is done in order to determine the relationships of the factors present, which is then used to create logical conclusions in regards to threats to the force or mission accomplishment, opportunities for mission accomplishment, and gaps in information. Endsley defined situational understanding as the understanding and comprehension of the meaning of information combined together and in terms of the goals of individuals.