Organizational climate is the ways people interpret and understand what happens to them at their work/organization and how they delineate what it is like to work in their organizations (Ehrhart, Schneider, & Macey, 2014). That perception has important empirical potency for a range of outcomes in healthcare settings that matter as safety, justice, discrimination, innovation and even patient mortality (West, Topakas, & Dawson, 2014). However, this concept is still debatable for its diverse meanings, a lack of consensus as a variable according to their own school of thoughts, and whether it is individual or group experiences (Schneider, Ehrhart, & Macey, 2013; Schneider, González-Romá, Ostroff, & West, 2017). This study aims to re-examine the existing knowledge of the organizational climate in improving its currency, accuracy, and relevance, to be more clarification and refinement of it. This study used the strategy of concept analysis by Walker and Avant (2014) which consists of eight steps. A review of the literature was performed to screen out articles related to organizational climate from the ten databases of CINAHL Complete, EBSCOhost, Google Scholar, Proquest, PubMed, ScienceDirect, Springer Link journals, Taylor & Francis, Web of Science, and Wiley Online library were performed using molar or generic terms ‘organizational climate’ with ‘hospital’ or ‘healthcare’ for the years 2013 to 2018. The thirty-nine articles were included in the subject matter of relating to the definitions, antecedents, defining attributes and consequences of organizational climate.
According to this analysis, organizational climate can be defined as the direct or indirect shared perception, experience and meaning by the members of the organization on the particular context of the organization in the process of decision making, leadership, norms, policies, practices, and procedures, within its internal environment, so as to influence the motivation and behaviors of its members rather than an individuals. The four attributes of organizational climate have resulted as 1) ‘the organization itself or uniqueness’ (the specific context of the organization and process of decision making, leadership, norms, policies, practices, and procedures in the organization); 2) employees’ direct or indirect shared perception, experience, and meaning (of the events, policies, practices, and procedures); 3) ‘organizational level rather than individuals/ group or unit level’; and 4) ‘the quality of its internal environment’.
The model case of changing hospital’s organizational climate to be a magnet hospital demonstrates the fruitful accomplishment of all attributes of the organizational climate concept by sharing their perception, experiences, and meaning of their work environment not only in context but also in processing and evaluating the changes to achieve the goals of the hospital. The related case has revealed as ‘organizational culture’ with the idea that is a very similar concept to organizational climate but quite different from organizational climate after closely examined. Remarkably, some areas of climate and culture are partly covered each other in the model of West, Topakas, and Dawson (2014).
The antecedents of organizational climate are those events or incidents that must occur prior to the occurrence of the concept as the objective settings, the social verification process, the organizational systems, and the human resource pattern and management of the organization (García, Castillo, & Santa-Bárbara, 2014; Monika & Kaliyamurthy, 2017; Scotti & Harmon, 2014). The consequences are those events or incidents that occur as a result of the occurrence of the organizational climate as both individual attitudes and behaviors and the organizational level outcomes. A range of studies showed consequences of organizational climate that job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment as the employees’ attitudes and organizational citizenship behavior, workplace deviance, turnover intentions, innovative behavior, and work performance as their behaviors, and the organizational level consequences (quality of care, patient satisfaction, job satisfaction, commitment, and intention to leave) (Boyd, 2017; Bronkhorst Tummers, Steijn, & Vijverberg, 2015; Randhawa & Kaur, 2014). The vital question of this analysis as “How is the concept of organizational climate to be measured?” is explained by defining empirical referents for use in measuring organizational climate.
It is an abstract, multidimensional concept and of enduring quality experienced by the organization members by comprising individual and unit level shared perception on their organization in both context and process, can differentiate from others, perceived their organization as a whole, and so as to enhance their motivation and behavior. This analysis contributes on the debate of the diversity and confusing issues in this concept in the management of healthcare by highlighting the way in which staff perceived it and the variation addressed in the context of the individual organizations. However, this is the process of the theory development and further refinement of this concept and testing will be needed. The implications of this analysis can be useful to policy makers, managers, and professionals in understanding how the perception of organizational climate fits as a predictor of both individual and organizational outcomes. It is clear that managers must communicate effectively with employees to the better understanding of the shared perception, meaning and feelings of their experiences concerning climate in their organization and it can also motivate their attitudes and behaviors which in turn to develop the organizational effectiveness.
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