First period (before 1970): the pioneers of the social context in organizations
Authors	year	Main contributions
K. Lewin, R. Lippitt, R. White.	1939	They were the pioneers in making the first approaches to the concept of organizational climate, through conceptions such as social atmosphere, postulating the existence of 6 dimensions that account for the social climate: warmth and support, conformity, responsibility, standards of excellence, rewards, and organizational clarity.
E. Fleishman	1953	This author used OC when describing the degree to which training is transferred, when the employee returns to work, and relates it to the behavior of the leader.
Pace & Stern	1958	Studied climate in university environments.
Argyris Schein Katz y Kahn Likert	1957 1965 1966 1967	This early psychological lens is quite important and is preserved today, as the climate is considered to reside within the perceptions of individuals. Likert establishes three types of variables that define the characteristics of an organization and that influence the individual perception of OC, in this sense the three variables are: 1. Causal Variables: Defined as independent variables, which are oriented to indicate the sense in which an organization evolves and obtains results. Among these variables are the organizational and administrative structure, decisions, competencies, and attitudes. 2. Intermediate Variables: They are oriented to measure the internal state of the organization, reflected in aspects such as motivation, performance, communication, and decision making. 3. Final Variables: They arise as a result of the effect of causal and intermediate variables, they are oriented to establish results obtained by the organization such as productivity, profit, and loss.
Litwin y Stringer	1968	They explain important aspects of the behavior of individuals working in an organization, using concepts such as motivation and climate. They describe the situational and environmental determinants that most influence the behavior and perception of the individual. They postulate the existence of nine dimensions that would explain the OC existing in each company. Each of these dimensions relates to certain properties of the organization, such as Structure; Responsibility; Reward; Risk; Heat; Support; Performance standards; Conflict, and Identity.
Schneider y Bartlett	1968	They developed an OC measuring instrument, That they applied to assess the climate of life insurance agencies that contained similar dimensions to those proposed by Litwin.
Second period (1971-1985): fundamentals of the definition and measurement of the construct.
James y Jones	1974	At the beginning the debate focused on the following question: if the climate is an attribute of the environment, but is perceived by individuals in the environment, how can it be investigated in the environment? These authors clarified the conceptually calling climate studies at the individual level “psychological climate” and studies in the (organizational) unit. level of analysis, “organizational climate”. The distinction was important because it gave the researchers a shared terminology to clarify at what level of analysis a specific study was conducted. These authors from the beginning emphasized the idea that OC is a perception that resides within an individual, and only when perceptions are shared can there be an elevation of the level of construct analysis.
Schneider	1975	He proposed that OC studies should focus on specific issues such as service climate analysis or safety climate analysis. In essence, he argued that the OC, measures were too unfocused to generate convincing results, adopting this approach improved the research of the concept.
Pritchard y Karasick	1973	These authors proposed to measure the organizational climate through eleven dimensions considered independent, descriptive, and related to the perceptual theory of the organizational climate, which were: autonomy, conflict and cooperation, social relations, structure, remuneration, performance, motivation, status, flexibility, and innovation and, finally, centralization of decision making.
Third period (1986-1999): focus on the differences between culture and organizational climate.
Kozlowski y Doherty	1989	They proposed that leadership is an antecedent of the OC, this principle oriented the research of scholars in that sense.
Schneider, White y Paul	1998	They oriented the research on the results, from here emerged very interesting research on the service climate and customer satisfaction.
Denison	1996	This author considers that both concepts represent distinguishable perspectives. Thus, while culture refers to deeply rooted and assumed values and assumptions, climate refers to environmental factors consciously perceived and subject to organizational control, which translate into behavioral patterns. Even so, this same author considers that the climate can be linked to the construct of Culture.
Schneider Ashkanasy, Wilderom and Peterson. Ashkanasy and Jackson.	1999	Although they recognize differences between culture and climate, they emphasize that both concepts overlap and are complementary.
Fourth period (2000-present): multilevel research and culture-climate integration
Kozlowski y Klein	2000	They developed a greater emphasis on context analysis, to understand and explain employee behavior at work.
Ehrhart, Schneider y Macey	2014	They conducted climate-focused studies, in which they addressed the most relevant components of the organizational environment to achieve a specific result. Such climates include climates that focus on internal organizational processes and climates that focus on the strategic objectives of the organization. The study of focused climates is currently the most common approach to studying climate among organizational researchers and has expanded to a wide variety of topics.
Lindell y Brandt Schneider, Salvaggio and Subirats	2000 2002	These authors increasingly examined leadership as a precursor to OC.
Ostroff, Kinicki & Muhammad Zohar & Hofmann, Schein	2013 2012 2011	Authors who started with integration, to show how the two concepts could be linked for further progress, meant a breakthrough in the field of organizational behavior.