ClimateQUAL

Advancing Organizational Health, Leadership, and Diversity in the Service of Libraries

Edited by Charles B. Lowry

Publication date:

31 August 2017

Length of book:

214 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Dimensions:

238x156mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781538106532

This book describes the application of The ClimateQUAL® survey protocol (originally Organizational Climate and Diversity Assessment–OCDA©) to over 55 libraries with thousands of individual respondents in the US, Canada and UK. The ClimateQUAL toolkit provides the ultimate management tool for effective organizational adaptation by employing deep assessment of a library’s staff opinions to plumb the dimensions of climate and organizational culture important for a healthy organization in a library setting. It tests critical attitudes around 26 validated dimensions. The ClimateQUAL survey measures include work attitudes, diversity climate, leadership and several other dimensions of library climate. The book describes the procedure for evaluating the structure and psychometric properties of each of these scales. The survey protocol provides feedback based on normative data from the libraries that have already participated. By using these normative scales and institutional results effectively, significant improvements can be achieved. Among other results, the ClimateQUAL research shows that the most effective techniques for remediation are not top-down, but those that engage the entire staff.
The book touches on all significant findings of the 15-year project, including the positive impact of diversity on customer service experience and the emerging understanding of a new concept—the healthy organization—and how it is built. A full view is provided of the history and experience with ClimateQUAL since its inception and its use in libraries.

Chapter 1: Introduction and Overview—ClimateQUAL®, Building a Potent Instrument for Organizational Health and Diversity, Charles B. Lowry, M. Sue Baughman, and Paul J. Hanges
Chapter 2: The Healthy Organization—Properties of ClimateQUAL Scales, Paul J. Hanges and Juliet R. Aiken
Chapter 3: Leadership Matters—The ClimateQUAL® Case, Paul J. Hanges, Charles B. Lowry, and Juliet R. Aiken
Chapter 4: Organizational Climate and Customer Service—The ClimateQUAL® and LibQUAL+® Connection, Martha Kyrillidou and Gary Roebuck
Chapter 5: Improvement Strategies and Organizational Change Using ClimateQUAL®, Sue Baughman
Chapter 6: Longitudinal Change Leads to Healthy Environments, Sue Baughman and Mark A. Puente
Chapter 7: Differences and Equity: A Reflective Analysis of ClimateQUAL® Demographics and Organizational Climate, Shaneka Morris, Martha Kyrillidou, and Mark Puente
Chapter 8: ClimateQual® in the UK: Applying the Protocol in a Different Culture, Stephen Town

Lowry provides an excellent overview of the history and development of ClimateQUAL as an instrument to understand organizational culture and climate. Of particular note is the analysis of ClimateQUAL results linked to leadership effectiveness and how leadership may be evaluated as a contributor to a healthy organization. Lowry’s ClimateQUAL examines the relationship between the two protocols of LibQUAL and ClimateQUAL demonstrating that a healthy organization contributes to a good service climate that is affirmed by library users. This research is helpful for organizations considering ClimateQUAL and a must read for organizations who are analyzing the results as it guides readers into the various applications of survey data.