Regarding Pam Wyess' inquiry about distinction between climate and
culture...all I can do is share the distinction I make and I do make
one. (Probably because when I was first trained as an OD consultant we
used to make use of climate surveys and they weren't culture surveys.)
To me, culture refers loosely to "the way things work around here" (all the
formal and informal rules, norms, customs, etc.). Because culture is the
product of formal and informal arrangements, it is partly open to
interventions from management but it is also partly immune to such
interventions. The formal organization never completely controls the
informal organization and the informal organization is never completely
free from the restraints and constraints of the formal organization.
Climate, to me, refers to the atmosphere in the organization, the way the
company feels at any point in time. An organization's atmosphere or
climate might be filled throughout with dread or despair or exuberance and
excitement or these and other labels for the way people in general are
feeling about the organization might be clustered in pockets scattered
about the organization. (Culture, too, varies throughout the organization;
the folks in Research, for example, typically have different rules, norms,
customs, sanctions and expectations than the folks in Operations and both
these differ from Sales and Marketing.)
Culture and climate, then, vary throughout the organization.
The climate in an organization can and does change regularly and quickly;
the culture is slow to change.
The climate in an organization can be sensed very quickly; it takes a while
to get a read on an organization's culture.
Finally, climate is a key indicator, culture is a core characteristic or
quality.
Those are the main distinctions I make between culture and climate. I hope
y'all find them interesting and perhaps useful.
--
Fred Nickols
The Distance Consulting Company
"Assistance at A Distance"
http://home.att.net/~nickols/distance.htm
nickols@worldnet.att.net
(609) 490-0095