Organisasieklimaat in sekondêre skole

Abstract

The school is a societal relationship which reveals characteristics of an organization. The nature and essence of the school can be determined through the making of a structural analysis of the school in terms of the fundamental traits of reality. The school is a creational given, which has a particular structure of authority. On the basis of the foregoing it becomes clear that the societal/relational life in the school is ordered according to its own nature. When the school is studied as an organization, it strikes one that there are divergent views with regard to the school as organization. Approaches to the school include the social approach, the bureaucratic approach and the anthropological, or man-directed approach. Organizational climate is often described as the atmosphere prevailing in or the personality of an organization (in this case, the school). Organizational climate cannot be studied as a concept in isolation from related concepts such as organizational culture, quality of working life, work achievement, work satisfaction, work motivation and general organizational health. Organizational climate in the school is a component of the quality of the working life of the teacher. Approaches towards organizational climate, however, differ and these differences in approaches are the result of the paradigms from which different authors argue their cases. In order to determine the openness of the organizational climate, use was made of a measuring instrument, viz. the Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire - Rutgers Secondary. This measuring instrument consists of thirty-four questions, which measure five factors in

terms of the teacher's experience of the organizational climate in his/her school. The questionnaire was implemented in all secondary schools under the control of the Orange Free State Education Department, and teachers at post levels 1 and 2 participated in the study. Seventy-eight of the eighty-six schools participated in the study. With the aid of a number of statistical techniques and procedures, analyses were made of the differences in the openness of organizational climate between different schools. A factorial analysis pointed out the construct validity of the questionnaire within the relevant South African population, while the reliability of the questionnaire was also indicated. It was found, amongst others, that principals are involved in the professional and personal welfare of their teachers, but that principals also tend to exert strict control over the teachers. experienced administrative work as a great burden. Teachers also As regards the differences in experience of the openness of the organizational climate, it was determined that there were significant differences in the openness of organizational climate among CS, 51 and 52 schools. In 51 schools the organizational climate is experienced in a primarily negative fashion. In schools with a technical bias organizational climate is also experienced more negatively than in the other categories of schools, viz. academic and agricultural schools. As regards geographical situation, teachers in semi-urban areas experienced the organizational climate in their schools in a significantly negative manner in comparison with teachers in rural and urban areas. Guidelines for the improvement of the organizational climate were provided by way of a model. In the model stress is laid on the mission and objectives of the school, the creation of good relations between the principal and the staff, and among staff mutually, as well as on other contributing factors leading to the creation of a positive (open) organizational climate.