Introduction

Leadership style and organizational climate are two of the most widely used, debated and researched concepts in management. Everyone can make a list of great leaders. We know good leadership when we see it. What is a leader? Does a good leader stand alone, or must there be a good fit with the firm's culture and climate? What is a good climate? What climate is needed to be successful in an organizational change process? Leadership and organizational climate are important issues to take into account when you design an organization. A firm's leadership style and organizational climate are the two sides of how the people in the organization think and act. In your approach to designing an organization you should focus on analyzing the leadership style and organizational climate. The leadership style is the predominant mode used by the top management of your unit of analysis to manage employees. This is the top management of the entire organization if your unit of analysis is an entire company or firm. It is the department head or team leader(s) if your unit of analysis is a department or team. Top management is the individual or group of people at the highest level of your unit of analysis. The organizational climate is the internal environment or working atmosphere as experienced by organizational employees. The organizational climate for your unit of analysis may or may not be consistent with the climate of the broader organization. So let us get on with these two important concepts. We start with the leadership style and then continue with the organizational climate.