The Climate Compression Effect on Hybrid Educational Organizations

Abstract

The transformation of educational organizations into digitally connected and hybrid environments has expanded academic interaction across physical and digital spaces. While hybridization offers greater flexibility and connectivity, it may also reshape how organizational members experience interpersonal and academic climates. This study proposes the Climate Compression Effect (CLC Effect) as a new qualitative conceptual lens for understanding a subtle organizational phenomenon in which the presence or arrival of a particular individual is experienced as narrowing the psychological, interpersonal, and communicative space of other organizational members. The study employs a qualitative exploratory approach and positions CLC as a sensitizing concept rather than a predetermined theoretical model. The conceptual analysis indicates that climate compression may be experienced through increased caution in communication, reduced openness, diminished informal interaction, greater interpersonal formality, selective communication, and withdrawal, even in the absence of overt conflict or formal organizational disruption. The phenomenon is particularly relevant to hybrid educational organizations because interpersonal influence may extend across interconnected physical and digital environments, including classrooms, meetings, messaging platforms, email, learning management systems, and online meetings. The study distinguishes CLC from organizational conflict, psychological safety, and the chilling effect by emphasizing the broader perceived contraction of the organizational space in which members communicate and interact. The CLC Effect is therefore proposed as a sensitizing concept for future qualitative investigation of interpersonal climate dynamics in hybrid educational organizations.