Psychology of management

Social-and-emotional climate is defined as the prevailing in the collective 
considerably stable psychological mood of its employees
which is manifested in multi-
faceted forms of their activity. Being formed on the basis of emotional and labor relations 
in the group, on individual values orientation, social-and-psychological climate in its turn 
in itself defines the system of collective member’s attitudes to each other, to their work, 
to all other activities (to everyday life, leisure, etc.). 
The most important peculiarity of social-and-emotional climate is that it provides 
the general, integrated characteristic of psychological state of all the manifestations of a 
collective’s life because it integrates the interaction of the whole scope of social, group, 
and personal factors as conditions of labor activity. 
An attitude of one person affects the attitude of the other person communicating 
with him/her. Thus forms emotional interdependence which includes people’s feelings, 
emotions, opinions, and moods. Social-and-psychological climate impacts labor mood of 
every employee and the collective as a whole. A positive, healthy social-and-
psychological climate promotes the desire to work willingly and efficiently, while an 
unhealthy, negative climate decreases work-motivation sharply. 
Many executives think that social-and psychological climate is something difficult 
to grasp: on the one hand, it seems to exist, but on the other hand it is difficult to feel. In 
this case one should turn to an especially sensitive category of employees who have 
worked at an enterprise for quite a long period of time to be able to evaluate the 
peculiarities of relations, and not long enough to get accustomed, to give up. According 
to psychologists, these are the people who have worked in the collective 10 – 15 years.
The state of social-and-psychological climate is one of the most important work 
characteristics. It depends on good, benevolent relations, is reinforced with positive 
motivation, mutual respect, successful leadership, good communications, cooperation, 
mutual assistance. Achieving a high level of social-and psychological climate is a long-
term process which is practically impossible to be realized quickly, on the grounds of 
slogans and appeals.
A healthy social-and-psychological climate in a collective grows slowly and is 
difficult to maintain at an adequate level. The state of the microclimate in a collective 
may change like weather from day to day. Fluctuations in people’s moods, states may 
quickly change under the impact of sudden conditions both favourable and unfavourable. 
Unfortunately, the nature of human memory is such that it often forgets good things and 
remembers bad ones for a long time, that’s why negative, unfavourable emotions can 
sharply worsen an employee’s positive mood and affect his/her fulfilling production tasks 
for a long time. 

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To evaluate the quality of social-and-psychological climate one needs to analyze 
all of its components. In the structure of social-and-psychological climate there are 
distinguished two basic components – the people’s attitude to work and their attitude to 
each other. All the multiplicity of these attitudes and relations are viewed through the 
prism of two main parameters of psychological tuning – the emotional one, and the object 
one. 
Under the term of object tuning is understood the attention directedness and the 
character of a person’s perceiving certain aspects of his/her activity. The emotional 
tuning supposes the attitude of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with these aspects of 
activity. 
Apart from it, social-and-psychological climate determines people’s attitude to the 
world in general and self-perception of themselves as part of it. And this, in its turn, may 
manifest itself in the whole system of a personality’s value orientations, who is a member 
of a certain collective. The climate is also manifested in a certain manner in each of 
collective’s member attitude to oneself. Thus,