A STUDY AND EXTENDED THEORY OF THE STRUCTURATION OF CLIMATE

In this paper we report on a longitudinal case study of an administrat ive unit of a large nonfederal government following the election of a new Chief Elective Official. In this case, the changing climate become s a dominant characteristic of the emerging situation. Poole and McPhe e's (1983) extension of Giddens' Structuration Theory is employed as a n analytic framework, tracing through the evolution and transformation of climate themes in the case. We find new categories of, and conditi ons affecting, climate-theme emergence, spread, and sedimentation. Mor e particularly, the case demonstrates the complexity of organizational climate, with several processes interacting simultaneously to generat e a constantly changing climate in the course of reproducing the organ ization's culture and beliefs. Importantly, the case shows how these c omplex climate processes are related to demoralization and counterinte ntational results in organizational change.