THE USE OF CATEGORIES AS INDICATORS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE IN BRAZILIAN COMPANIES

Abstract

In order to analyze employees’ perception of the work environment, companies with a well-established people management structure periodically conduct organizational climate surveys. These surveys are meant to offer an understanding of how employees view the quality of the relationships they experience in the company. One of the characteristics of this type of survey, identified both in the relevant literature and empirically in practice, is the use of categories or indicators to direct development of the research instrument, data analysis, and later intervention as needed according to the results of the survey. This article seeks to propose a categorization of organizational climate dimensions directed at the Brazilian corporate reality, analysing its internal consistency and its construct validity. To that end, we used the results of a wide-ranging data sample collected from 123,445 respondents of 491 organizations in various regions of Brazil. The proposed analysis categories – identity, satisfaction and motivation, learning and development, and leadership – were reviewed based on theories of organizational behavior and then submitted to a focus group composed of human resources professionals employed by prominent Brazilian corporations.