The Crisis-Prone Organization as a Factor in Workplace Aggression

Abstract

Although workplace aggression has been linked in theory to characteristics of the worker as well as to characteristics of the organization, there have been few supporting data. This research examines the relationship between organizational climate and workplace aggression. A diverse sample of 57 subjects, representing a wide variety of occupations and worksites, responded to a questionnaire measuring the perceived crisis proneness of their organizations. Subjects also rated the amount of aggression at their worksites. The crisis proneness scale, developed for this research, had an alpha of .87 and correlated +.56 with the amount of aggression reported by subjects. This relationship held up with job satisfaction, social desirability, and various demographic variables controlled for. Crisis proneness also correlated very highly with a measure of perceived fairness of the organization, and these two variables were not practically distinguishable in this research. It is suggested that security managers need to be very aware of the organizational climate, and do all that they can to minimize perceptions that the organization is ‘crisis-prone’ or that it is treating workers unfairly.