It is necessary to understand the broad theoretical underpinnings of organizational climate so as to develop an adequate perspective of the term.
The earliest theories on OC have been rooted in the concepts of the interactive relationship between organization and man as posited by Kurt Lewin. Based on this, Getzels and Guba developed the “idiographic- nomothetic model” in which an organization is described as a social system featuring a hierarchical role-structure.
For each role in the structure-principal, vice-principal, supervisor/HOD, or teacher there are certain behavioural expectations. Everyone in the social system including the role incumbent observes others and thus has certain perceptions and expectations of how those in other roles will behave.
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This implies that there is an overall institutional role expectation for the principal in terms of his activities, tasks, behaviours, decisions that she should take ceremonies to be performed. Similar role expectations will be held for people occupying other positions also.
However, each of these persons has distinct personality characteristics and needs. Getzels and Guba, taking into account these aspects of institutional role expectations and individual personality and needs, have proposed the model of an organization as a social system.
This model describes two dimensions which are significant factors in producing organizational behaviour: (a) the personal dimension and (b) the organizational dimension. This is described in the following figure by Getzels and Guba:
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According to this model, each behavioural act is seen as stemming simultaneously from the nomothetic and the idiographic dimensions.
This model has been the basis of many researches and practices and emphasizes the desirability and the possibility of attaining congruence of the demands that institutions make on individuals and personal needs of individuals.
A congenial and desirable organizational climate, therefore, is one where teachers would find the organizational demands on them to be just exactly what they, as individuals, actually desired. This is known as needs-demands congruence.
However, Chris Argyris asserts that needs of an individual cannot be totally congruent with demands of an organization. Argyris opines that it is important to find ways to manage this inevitable conflict between needs and demands and keep it within tolerable limits.
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This is possible in an organizational climate which permits people to admit that conflict exists, to talk about it or to make attempts to reduce the causes of conflict. According to-him, this requires an interpersonal atmosphere of trust, openness and low threat, without which people feel they must attempt to hide conflict, which makes a problem more difficult to identify and deal with.
For example, if teachers feel that it is improper, disloyal or unprofessional to discuss weaknesses in the institution, they will avoid discussing the; e weaknesses or dealing openly with them.
At a later stage, Etzioni (1961) posited that the situation may not be quite so simple. He developed the ‘compliance theory’ which explains that the ‘fit’ between individual needs and organizational demands will depend, to a great extent, on how an organization attracts participants and keeps them involved.
According to Etzioni, if an organization forces an individual to join and then compels him to remain a participant, then such an organization is a ‘coercive’ organization, like a prison. On the other hand, if an organization is joined by people who are paid remuneration in return, then it is a ‘utilitarian’ organization.
Besides, there exists other organization, known as ‘normative’ organizations, which attract and hold participants mainly on the basis of their high commitment to certain goals and ideals examples of which include schools and colleges, religious and other associations etc.
In this kind of organizations, where the normative modes of behaviours are prevalent, compliance of its members to organizational demands is relatively easier to obtain and conflict between an individual and role expectations in an organization is expected to be lower.
However, in reality, it is possible that an organization can be classified as dual in that a school or a college is both a normative as well as a utilitarian organization.
These theoretical backgrounds provided by Argyris Getzels and Guba and Etzioni use concepts such as role theory, social systems theory and compliance theory which attempt to explain the dynamics of human behaviour in organizations and the social environment within them.