mar09b.indd


Martha Kyrillidou and M. Sue Baughman 

ClimateQUAL
Organizational Climate and Diversity Assessment 

ClimateQUAL­Organizational Climate and Diversity Assessment (OCDA) is an 
assessment of library staff perceptions con­
cerning a) their library’s commitment to the 
principles of diversity, b) organizational poli­
cies and procedures, and c) staff attitudes. It 
is an online survey with questions designed 
to understand the impact perceptions have 
on service quality in a library setting. The 
survey addresses a number of climate issues, 
such as diversity, teamwork, learning, and 
fairness, as well as current managerial prac­
tices, and staff attitudes and beliefs. 

History of OCDA 
In 1999, the University of Maryland (UM) 
Libraries partnered with the UM Industrial 
and Organizational Psychology (I/OP) pro­
gram to develop OCDA, an assessment of 
the climate and culture of the UM libraries. 
In 2004, the UM Libraries once again part­
nered with the I/OP program to provide an 
updated “snapshot.” The analyses revealed 
that a number of positive changes had oc­
curred over the four year interval between 
the two surveys. This work not only identi­
fied the dimensions of climate and culture 
important for a healthy organization in a 
library setting, but also provided proof that 
feedback from the OCDA survey, when 
taken seriously, can have practical organi­
zational level benefi ts. 

In 2007, ARL and the UM Libraries (in 
partnership with the I/OP program) tested 
the generalizability of the OCDA protocol 
across multiple library organizations. Dur­
ing Phase I, five ARL institutions tested a 
modified OCDA survey and validated the hy­
pothesis that a healthy organization provides 

better customer service. In 2008, during 
Phase II, ten ARL and non­ARL institutions 
expanded the pilot, further refining the pro­
tocol. In 2009 the protocol was transferred to 
ARL in partnership with the I/OP program, 
known as ClimateQUAL: OCDA. 

The National Project 
Building a Healthy Organization Theory 
The framework for the development of the 
ClimateQUAL­OCDA is found in the orga­
nizational climate research literature. Three 
concepts intersect to create the climate of an 
organization: climate, culture, and diversity. 
Understanding these three concepts and 
how one impacts another is critical for creat­
ing an agile organization poised to survive 
in a rapidly changing environment. 

The work to date on this national project 
indicates that the combination of workforce 
diversity, organizational climate, and organi­
zational culture can lead to a “healthy orga­
nization” with the following elements: 

• Organizational Climate—“describes 
how things are done in an organization. It is the 
employees’ shared perceptions of the themes, 
goals, or imperatives that describe their work­
place.”1 This understanding generally comes 
from the policies, practices, and procedures 
that an organization has in place. 

• Organizational Culture—“refers to 
why things are done. It is the shared mean­

Martha Kyrillidou is director of statistics and service 
quality programs at the Association of Research 
Libraries, e-mail: martha@arl.org, and M. Sue Baughman 
is assistant dean for organizational development 
at the Universit y of Mar yland Libraries, e -mail: 
mbaughma@umd.edu 
© 2009 Martha Kyrillidou and M. Sue Baughman 

154C&RL News March 2009

mailto:mbaughma@umd.edu
mailto:martha@arl.org


ing that employees use to make sense of 
what happens in an organization. Employ­
ees may refer to organizational values to 
explain why certain policies or procedures 
are implemented.”2 

• Workforce Diversity—as the ethnic 
diversity of the workforce continues to in­
crease, this provides organizations the “op­
portunity to hire employees with a diverse 
set of competencies, perspectives, and prob­
lem­solving skills.” As such, this increased 
diversity enhances an organization’s ability 
to be “more responsive to a dynamic and 
ever changing environment.”3 

Paul J. Hanges goes on to defi ne the 
Healthy Organization as “an organization 
in which employees feel empowered. It is 
one in which employees believe that man­
agement values them and treats them fairly. 
It is an organization in which the policies, 
practices, and procedures are administered 
consistently and these practices work in 
concert to facilitate the attainment of one or 
more organizational goals (e.g., productivity, 
effi ciency, safety). 

Finally, it is an organization in which 
the connection with its environment is 
not forgotten.”4 They further state that 
the “healthy organization sends two kinds 
of complimentary messages to their em­
ployees (i.e., concern for employees and 
concern for customers). The ‘concern for 
employees’ message is sent when organi­
zational practices, policies, and procedures 
strongly indicate that things like teamwork, 
diversity, and justice are valued. The ‘con­
cern for customers’ message is created 
when the organizational practices, policies, 
and procedures strongly indicate that cus­
tomers are valued and meeting their needs 
is essential. When both of these messages 
are communicated, forces pushing toward 
overly restrictive workforce homogeneity 
are mitigated.”5 

The ClimateQUAL­OCDA national proj­
ect is researching the “role that organiza­
tional climate and organizational culture play 
in effectively managing workforce diversity”6 

to create a healthy organization. 

ClimateQUAL­OCDA Instrument 
The ClimateQUAL­OCDA is an instrument 
that draws on staff perceptions of the themes 
and goals that describe their place of work 
in a very broad and deep way. As a data 
gathering tool, it assesses whether the poli­
cies, procedures, and practices of the library 
are effectively supporting its mission. It also 
examines aspects of the library’s climate, 
e.g., fairness, diversity, and teamwork as 
they relate to customer service. Lastly, this 
tool examines employees’ perceptions of 
what behaviors are rewarded, supported, and 
expected in the organization. For a complete 
list of the concepts, go to the ClimateQUAL­
OCDA Web site.7 

Project goals and phases 
The goals of the project are to: 
• develop a tool that assesses the “health” 

of the library; 
• develop a large database of norms to 

help libraries interpret their results; 
• develop an active community of librar­

ies that share experiences and strategies to 
improve the effectiveness of their libraries; 

• track changes in libraries over time 
to permit objective feedback regarding ef­
fectiveness of the attempted practices and 
strategies; and 

• build empirical validation of the “healthy 
organization” theory. 

Participating institutions have agreed to 
continue to use the ClimateQUAL­OCDA 
survey at regular intervals, generally every 
three to four years. This is important in order 
to build benchmarks from which to gauge 
improvement over time. 

Phase I 
In 2007, five institutions participated as 

part of the Phase I activities including: Uni­
versity of Arizona, University of Connecticut, 
University of Iowa, University of Kansas, and 
Texas A&M University. The purpose of the 
survey was extended to capture informa­
tion about LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual 
and Transgender) issues and the concept of 
climate for service, which had not been pre­

March 2009  155 C&RL News 



viously tested in earlier implementations at 
UM. It was also agreed to test the Schneider 
Model—that organizational climate affects 
service to customers positively or negatively 
—a theory developed by Benjamin Schneider 
at UM. With the addition of questions related 
to LGBT issues and climate for service, the 
survey instrument stayed relatively the same 
as the 2004 survey completed by the UM 
Libraries staff. 

Goals for Phase I of the project were to test 
the existing instrument to see if the questions 
being asked translated to other institutions, 
assess the viability of an online survey using 
SurveyMonkey, and test whether there is a 
correlation between the climate of an orga­
nization and customer perceptions about the 
service they receive. The five partners sup­
ported this effort fiscally as well as by permit­
ting the use of their LibQUAL+ data in the 
research. Administration of the survey at each 
site was staggered from April to July with the 
survey open to staff for approximately three 
weeks. The overall return rates for the fi ve 
sites ranged from 66.29% to 85.77%. Phase I 
partners received their reports October 2007, 
reviewed the results with their staff, and are 
now addressing issues raised in the results. 
To support the project, a variety of tools were 
created during Phase I to provide information 
to the participating libraries and placed on 
the ClimateQUAL­OCDA Web site. 

Phase II 
Phase II of the project began January 2008 
with ten institutions including the UM Librar­
ies, Arizona State University, Cornell Uni­
versity, Duke University, Emory University, 
Kansas State University, New York Univer­
sity, Northwestern University, University of 
Houston, and University of Massachusetts­
Amherst. The goals were to continue testing 
the instrument and retain the questions that 
provide useful data (survey was reduced by 
approximately 100 questions after Phase I), 
test the reporting mechanisms, and build 
on what is being learned from Phase I in­
stitutions and their development of change 
strategies. Phase II survey implementation 

was again staggered over a four­month 
period. The overall return rates for the ten 
sites ranged from 45% to 81%. 

Project fi ndings/connections to 
LibQUAL+ and customer service 
Analysis of the Phase I results indicated 
that the concepts and scales in the original 
UM Libraries instrument “exhibit the same 
psychometric properties when administered 
at non­UM libraries”8 confirming the “gen­
eralizability and robustness of the OCDA 
scales.”9 

Hanges developed survey questions to test 
the internal climate for service and the nature 
of the relationship of this climate measure to 
other dimensions of the survey, such as cli­
mate for teamwork, diversity and workgroup 
conflict, as well as the relationship of these 
concepts to the LibQUAL+ dimensions of 
Affect of Service, Information Control, and 
Library as Place. Data regarding the relation 
between climate for diversity and climate 
for teamwork with the LibQUAL+ scores 
show that valuing diversity and information 
facilitation of teamwork relate to measures of 
customer service.10 

Such findings support the hypothesis 
that an optimal level of diversity relates to 
climate for service and defines the concept 
of a healthy organization, which is “better 
able to fulfill its service mission.”11 Phase I 
results also indicated that conflict within an 
organization does impact customer percep­
tions of library service quality, meaning that 
the climate of the organization does have a 
“direct and perceived impact on the service 
experienced by customers.”12 The relationship 
between a healthy organization and its abil­
ity to fulfi ll its service mission will be further 
researched using LibQUAL+ data from Phase 
II partners. 

Getting involved in Phase III and 
beyond 
One of the critical components of Climate­
QUAL­OCDA is the development of a com­
munity of interest and practice. In the case 
of this project, it is important to establish 

156C&RL News March 2009

http:service.10


the ability for participating institutions 
to share their ideas about transformative 
changes. Sharing expertise on how to 
implement change efforts relieves some of 
the burden for any one organization. Not 
reinventing the wheel is also important in 
this day of quickly changing environments 
and ever tightening budgets. Partners 
engaged in Phases I and II are commit­
ted to sharing their expertise within the 
community. 

Phase III of the project is underway in 
2009 with another small group of institu­
tions. Participation will add to the research 
foundation already established. Further 
testing of the instrument and the report­
ing mechanisms are critical elements for 
building a sustainable tool. If a library is 
interested in participating in 2009 and be­
yond or would like to learn more about the 
project, contact climatequal@arl.org. 

We are close to our goal of having yet 
another valuable assessment tool offered to 
the library community by the ARL Statistics 
and Measurement Program: ClimateQUAL­
OCDA. 

Notes 
1. Paul J. Hanges, Juliet Aiken, and 

Xiafang Chen. “Diversity, Organizational 
Climate, and Organizational Culture: The 
Role They Play in Infl uencing Organiza­
tional Effectiveness” in Proceedings of the 
Library Assessment Conference: Building 
Effective, Sustainable, Practical Assess­
ment, September 25­27, 2006, Charlot­
tesville, VA, ed. Francine DeFranco et al. 
(Washington, D.C.: Association of Research 
Libraries, 2007), 359. 

2. Ibid., 360. 
3. Ibid., 359–60. 
4. Paul J. Hanges, Juliet P. Aiken, and 

Xiafang Chen. “Climate for Diversity and 
Customer Service: The Healthy Organiza­
tion” Paper accepted for presentation at the 
2008 American Psychological Association 
Conference, Boston, p. 5, www.lib.umd. 
edu/ocda/hanges_libraryapa.pdf (Accessed 
February 2009). 

5. Ibid., 5. 
6. Hanges et al., (2007) 359. 
7. University of Maryland Libraries, “Cli­

mateQUAL™­Organizational Climate and 
Diversity Assessment,” www.lib.umd.edu 
/OCDA/ (accessed February 2009). 

8. Paul J. Hanges, Juliet Aiken, Xiafang 
Chen, Hali Chambers. “Phase 1 OCDA Scale 
Results: Psychometric Assessment and 
Descriptive Statistics for Partner Libraries.” 
Phase 1 OCDA Project, Technical Report, 
Industrial and Organizational Psychology 
Program, Department of Psychology, Uni­
versity of Maryland. (2007): 3. 

9. Ibid., 2. 
10. Hanges et al., (2008). 
11. Charles B. Lowry and Paul J. Hanges. 

“What is the Healthy Organization? Organi­
zational Climate and Diversity Assessment: A 
Research Partnership” portal: Libraries and 
the Academy, vol. 8, no. 1 (2008): 3–4. 

12. Ibid., 4. 

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