A work environment climate assessment of an Army acquisition center

Abstract

Organizational climate can be described as the overall atmosphere of a workplace consisting of a number of mostly intangible characteristics that nonetheless impact organizational performance. The goal of this Joint Applied Project was to identify organizational climate characteristics of the Army Acquisition Center to provide supervisors with data on the extent to which employees perceive their work environment to be conducive to high productivity. It provides the equivalent of a diagnostic "snapshot" of one aspect of organizational health. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 previous and 19 current acquisition workforce employees. Interview findings were supplemented with data collected from a researchersdeveloped survey. Findings included the following: (1) high stress due to increasing workload; (2) lack of authority to act and make decisions about the work; and (3) the successful acknowledgement of employee efforts and contributions.