Organizational Climate and its Impact on School's Performance

Abstract

Organizational climate is a key determiner for the administrative efficiency of organizations that develops processes and procedures for the creation of a constructive, optimistic, positive and creative organizational climate and lead to the effective achievement of organizational commitments. The provision of a positive organizational climate is a significant factor for the success of educational organizations and quality education of youth in society. Keeping in view the organizational climate as a predictor of schools‘ performance, the study aimed to explore organizational climate and its impact on schools‘ performance at secondary level in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The objectives of the study were to; explore organizational climate of secondary schools, categorize organizational health, evaluate teachers‘ job commitment and motivation, teachers‘ job performance and students‘ academic achievements and to investigate the relationship of schools‘ organizational climate with the personality of schools, teachers‘ job performance and academic achievements of students. The design of the study was descriptive quantitative survey having population of 2639 principals, 39182 teachers and 970871 students of secondary schools. The sample was determined with multi-stage cluster random sampling and its respondents were; 50 heads, 326 teachers and 1000 students. Four instruments, i.e. organizational climate description questionnaire for heads and teachers, organizational health inventory for teachers, teachers‘ job commitment and motivation questionnaire for teachers and teachers‘ job performance questionnaire for students were developed, validated and used for the collection of data. Data were personally collected from respondents, analyzed and interpreted with Percentage, Mean, Standard Deviation, Chi-Square, Pearson Correlation, t-test and linear regression. The study explored that majority of the respondents were of the view that principals had directive behaviors, dominated meetings and ruled with iron hands, teachers‘ behaviors were frustrated and the schools were vulnerable to external pressures. It was also pointed out that although teachers come regularly and well prepared but in their teaching, they neither used different methods nor did they taught according to their abilities. The study also revealed that organizational climate has positive correlation and positive impact on organizational health of the schools, teachers‘ job commitment and motivation, teachers‘ job performance and students‘ academic xiv achievements. The study recommended that as organizational climate is relatively a new field, therefore; it may be taught as a subject in all teachers‘ training institutions and in education departments/faculties of the universities to develop conceptual knowledge of the educational leaders and teachers. At present Educational Monitoring Authority (EMA) did not include organizational climate as an indicator for the school development/progress. So, the government may explicitly include organizational climate in the evaluation system (assessment) of the schools. Education department may be empowered to design schools improvement forums in which experts may discuss different issues of the educational institutions and suggest measures for creating positive school climate in order to provide conducive learning environment for the learners. School leaders are required to determine the ways to cultivate positive relationship with community which directly affect organizational climate of the school and in turn have a positive impact on teachers‘ job performance and students‘ academic achievements.