Organisational climate vs. organisational culture

Organisational culture has become a hot topic, with many leaders and experts talking about how particular organisational cultures can be implemented, or how organisations can make cultural change. However, in a post on CultureUniversity.com, Tim Kuppler warns that “Unfortunately, the reality is that most of these leaders and experts are actually focusing their efforts on climate and not dealing with the deeper, more powerful subject of culture.”

So what’s the difference? As part of a paper¹ looking at the links between organisational climate and managerial practices and innovation, Manuela Varsani discusses the differences and also the overlap between “organisational climate” and “organisational culture”.

The two concepts have different research perspectives, with the climate concept based on psychological field theory and the culture concept typically addressed by the anthropology discipline. They also have different implications: “The term climate means consciously perceived processes and factors of the environment that can be controlled by the organisation. The focus of climate is on the situation and its link to perceptions, feelings, and behaviour of employees.”

Further differences are listed in the following table.

So, before engaging in a cultural adoption or change activity, make sure that it is actually organisational culture you are dealing with.

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Also published on Medium.