Assessing the Organizational Climate for Innovation

Using Western Theory to study the milieu of innovative and non-innovative schools in Mexico.
Edith J. Cisneros-Cohernour1
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Abstract
This paper describes the findings of a preliminary study of the relationship between organizational
climate and school innovation in Mexico. The study provides an understanding about how Western
theories about the impact of the school organization environment apply in context and culture.
Also, it offers an insight into how school administrators create an environment that facilitates the
successful implementation of innovations. Data collection involved a survey of faculty in five
colleges at a Southeast Mexican University. The findings of the study support previous research
that depict the relationship between school climate and innovation. This study expands on those by
including additional factors beyond those examined in previous work.
Antecedents
During the last years, the Mexican government began to support the implementation of educational
reforms aimed to improve the quality of higher education and serving the needs of an increasingly
diverse student population. This is reflected in the support given to universities for increasing the
preparation of faculty, the use of technology in teaching, and the implementation of professional
development programs for faculty (National Program for Educational Development 1995-20002).
However, in spite of the support and investments on technology and organizational innovation, it is
not uncommon to find that for teachers in classrooms decades of old practice prevails. Evidence of
this is that the evaluation of some professional development programs for teachers has shown that
although the professionals acquired the knowledge and skills for improving their teaching, they
return to pre-training traditional methods (Barrera, 1990).
Although the failure to implement successful systems change projects take place in other countries
and contexts, the problem of scare resources makes the situation more serious in Mexico.
According to de Moura Castro and Levy (1997), the adoption of organizational innovation and new
technology is a priority because present day Latin American institutions of higher learning remain
distant from the world and forego the benefits of technical progress loosing legitimacy and
prestige (p. 4).
Since a broad body of research indicates that one of the main variables that influences the adoption
and use of new ideas is the organizations climate3, it is important to study this and other variables
that influence schools to successfully implement organizational change despite of their limited
resources, teacher traditionalism and other barriers for change. This study was directed toward that
purpose, it focused on the relationship between the school climate and innovation in the setting of a
Southeast Mexican university.
Research questions
1

Edith Cisneros-Cohernour is also an associate professor at the Universidad Autonoma de Yucatan

Programa Nacional de Desarrollo Educativo 1995 - 2000.
3
As Poole (1991) mentions, one of the factors facilitating school innovations is the relationship between the
teachers and the administration. This is also supported by Dennison, and Behnke (1993) who found that there
is an inverse relationship between centralized leadership and institutional innovation.
2

The main questions addressed by this study were:

Is the school climate of the universitys innovative schools significantly different from that one
of its non-innovative schools? How?
Is the behavior of the dean and faculty significantly different in the schools that have
successfully adapted innovations from those who failed?
Methodology
To study the relationship between organizational climate and innovation in the colleges of a
Southeast Mexican university, the researchers adapted an instrument that was a modified version of
the Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire by Halpin & Croft, and validated by
Valenzuela and Onetto (1983) in Chile. Five schools were selected for this preliminary study. The
criteria for selecting the schools were the schools ability to successfully implement organizational
and technological innovations as determined by a identification of promising practices using a
checklist of innovations (Cisneros, 1993) and a panel of three experts. The instrument was
administered to faculty in each of the colleges. For each school a score was calculated for these
climate dimensions:
1. Hindrance -- teachers feelings that the principal burdens them with routine duties, committee
work, and other requirements that the teachers perceive as unnecessary busywork.
2. Intimacy -- teachers enjoyment of warm and friendly personal relationships with one another
3. Disengagement -- teachers tendency to go through the motions without an actual
commitment to the task at hand.
4. Espirit -- morale growing out of a sense of both task accomplishment and social satisfaction
5. Production emphasis -- a close supervisory behavior on the part of the principal. The principal
is highly directive and not sensitive to faculty feedback.
6. Aloofness -- formal and impersonal principal behavior by the principal. The principal goes by
the book and maintains social distance from his or her staff.
7. Consideration -- warm, friendly behavior by the principal. The principal tries to be helpful and
do little something extra for the faculty when he or she can.
8. Administrative drive -- dynamic principal behavior in which an attempt to move the
organization is made through the example that the principal sets for the teachers.
In addition, the researchers calculated a raw indication of climate openness using the Oppeness
Index by Hoy & Miskel (1991): Administrative drive score + Espirit score - Disengagement
score for each of the schools participating in the study.
Results
The most innovative colleges obtained slightly higher scores in the dimensions of faculty espirit
and the least innovative colleges obtained higher scores in faculty disengagement and hindrance. In
addition, innovative schools obtained higher scores on the following dimensions related to the
leader behavior: administrative drive, production emphasis, and aloofness.
Less innovative, on the other hand, obtained higher scores in the dimension of consideration.
These differences, however, were not statistically significant. When compared as a group,
innovative schools were significantly lower in the dimensions faculty disengagement (0.02) and
scored higher in the dimension administrative production emphasis (0.07). The organizational
climate of innovative schools was significantly more open than the one of non innovative schools
(0.10).
Conclusion
This preliminary study looking at the relationship between climate and innovation in the more and
least innovative schools of a Southeast Mexican University. As the findings of the study indicate,

there is a relationship between these two constructs but not in all the dimensions as predicted in the
literature. Innovative schools were significantly lower in faculty disengagement but they were also
high in the leader aloofness and production emphasis. A possible explanation is that in a different
cultural context close supervision and impersonality on the side of the leader may not affect the
adoption of innovative practices, especially those that are initiated by the administration. But, the
findings show that if faculty are not committed to their work, this will negatively influence the
innovation efforts.
In addition, the use of pre-defined categories to define school climate instrument deserve further
attention because they may not include other aspects of the organizations environment that are
compatible with the cultural context of the study. Further research efforts could use a more in-depth
observation of the colleges climate using a more more wholistic approach.
Educational significance of the study
The study presents special importance for both the theory on educational administration and the
professional development of school administrators. From the theoretical point of view, the study
addresses a gap in the literature on school administration, especially in the research on school
climate and innovation in Mexico. The results of the study will expand current knowledge in this
area, especially on the application of European-American theories in another cultural context. This
was one of the first studies on the relationship between school environment and innovation in Latin
America.
The study is also important because of its possible practical impact on professional development
and the improvement of higher education in Mexico. Because the climate is highly influenced by
the role of the leader and his behavior4, the findings of the study may also, in turn, be used to
develop professional development programs that address the needs of Mexican high school
principals and facilitate future research comparing the problems and experiences of innovative
schools in other Latin American countries and the United States. Because of the diversity of the
United States, that study also raises important issues when using theories to study the
characteristics of culturally diverse schools.

As Rencher R (1992) mentions, the school climate and culture are the most effective avenues for
engendering student motivation (p. 1)) and which can be influenced by the leader. Klug (1989) supports this
view and states that by effectively managing the culture and climate, the leader can shape the attitudes of
teachers, students parents, and the community and can increase both student and teacher motivation, and thus,
impact learning. (p. 1).

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