Measure Of Organizational Climate Research Articles

BELRON keeps a close eye on the climate

PurposeDetails how the organizational climate measure OCSII is being used in the BELRON group of companies as an indicator of leadership capability. Focuses on team climate and how this may be linked to changes in business performance.Design/methodology/approachConsiders the deployment of the climate tool in the top teams of three BELRON business units and links the results to available information relating to performance.FindingsReveals that, within BELRON, there is a belief that the emphasis on climate has been a major contributor to its enhanced business performance over recent years. Presents information from three BELRON contexts where changes in climate would appear to have preceded improvements in business performance. Concedes, however, that despite these examples of ‘high‐performing climates’ appearing to be linked with profitability, or other measures of business performance, this is not seen to be universal within the company.Practical implicationsProvides plenty to interest human‐resource management and organizational‐development specialists, as well as other senior managers.Originality/valueDescribes how the OSCII tool may be deployed to support team‐performance management.

Employees’ Willingness to Report Service Complaints

This article presents the concept of service workers’ willingness to report service complaints (WRC) and examines frontline workers’ discretion about reporting customer complaints in two qualitative studies and a quantitative study. The qualitative studies conceptualize WRC based on a critical incident technique and interviews with service providers and reveal that service providers practice much discretion in their decision to report both informal and formal complaints, weighing cost/ benefit considerations, customer motivation and complaint justification, and numerous organizational and other factors. The quantitative study examines a preliminary WRC scale and its relationship with several correlates and shows that WRC levels are associated with measures of organizational citizenship behavior, service climate, and empowerment. The discussion examines the contribution of the findings regarding WRC to research on service recovery and improving customer satisfaction and presents managerial implications.

Organizational climate and intensive care unit nurses' intention to leave*

The purposes of this study were to a) estimate the incidence of intensive care units nurses' intention to leave due to working conditions; and b) identify factors predicting this phenomenon. Cross-sectional design. Hospitals and critical care units. Registered nurses (RNs) employed in adult intensive care units. Organizational climate, nurse demographics, intention to leave, and reason for intending to leave were collected using a self-report survey. Nurses were categorized into two groups: a) those intending to leave due to working conditions; and b) others (e.g., those not leaving or retirees). The measure of organizational climate had seven subscales: professional practice, staffing/resource adequacy, nurse management, nursing process, nurse/physician collaboration, nurse competence, and positive scheduling climate. Setting characteristics came from American Hospital Association data and a survey of chief nursing officers. A total of 2,323 RNs from 66 hospitals and 110 critical care units were surveyed across the nation. On average, the RN was 39.5 yrs old (SD = 9.40), had 15.6 yrs (SD = 9.20) experience in health care, and had worked in his or her current position for 8.0 yrs (SD = 7.50). Seventeen percent (n = 391) of the respondents indicated intending to leave their position in the coming year. Of those, 52% (n = 202) reported that the reason was due to working conditions. Organizational climate factors that had an independent effect on intensive care unit nurse intention to leave due to working conditions were professional practice, nurse competence, and tenure (p < .05). Improving professional practice in the work environment and clinical competence of the nurses as well as supporting new hires may reduce turnover and help ensure a stable and qualified workforce.

Assessing change: can organizational learning “work” for schools?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to measure the effectiveness and practical utility of an organizational learning intervention for an organization that was not progressive, was not specifically chartered as a learning organization, and was situated in an urban, culturally diverse, and under‐privileged community.Design/methodology/approachIn this empirical case study, employees were surveyed pre‐ and post‐intervention on measures of organizational learning, school climate and morale. Archival data on turnover rates were also collected for the years bracketing the intervention (2003‐2005).FindingsAnalyses show the center reduced turnover and improved in organizational learning, morale, and to a lesser degree, organizational climate. Analyses demonstrate relationships between change in organizational climate dimensions (e.g. supportive leadership, appraisal and recognition, goal congruence) and change toward organizational learning.Originality/valueThis research suggests that organizational learning – and the post‐bureaucratic practices that characterize it – can be useful even in the most challenging of settings. Unlike previous research, this study specifically addresses organizational learning's utility for under‐privileged populations; it also examines how the more traditional measure of organizational climate is related to post‐industrial notions of learning and business performance. It should be of value to academics and practitioners wishing to apply organizational learning to less‐advantaged and change‐averse organizations.

Organizational climate and intensive care unit nurses’ intention to leave*

The purposes of this study were to a) estimate the incidence of intensive care units nurses' intention to leave due to working conditions; and b) identify factors predicting this phenomenon. Cross-sectional design. Hospitals and critical care units. Registered nurses (RNs) employed in adult intensive care units. Organizational climate, nurse demographics, intention to leave, and reason for intending to leave were collected using a self-report survey. Nurses were categorized into two groups: a) those intending to leave due to working conditions; and b) others (e.g., those not leaving or retirees). The measure of organizational climate had seven subscales: professional practice, staffing/resource adequacy, nurse management, nursing process, nurse/physician collaboration, nurse competence, and positive scheduling climate. Setting characteristics came from American Hospital Association data and a survey of chief nursing officers. A total of 2,323 RNs from 66 hospitals and 110 critical care units were surveyed across the nation. On average, the RN was 39.5 yrs old (SD = 9.40), had 15.6 yrs (SD = 9.20) experience in health care, and had worked in his or her current position for 8.0 yrs (SD = 7.50). Seventeen percent (n = 391) of the respondents indicated intending to leave their position in the coming year. Of those, 52% (n = 202) reported that the reason was due to working conditions. Organizational climate factors that had an independent effect on intensive care unit nurse intention to leave due to working conditions were professional practice, nurse competence, and tenure (p < .05). Improving professional practice in the work environment and clinical competence of the nurses as well as supporting new hires may reduce turnover and help ensure a stable and qualified workforce.

Understanding practitioners’ characteristics and perspectives prior to the dissemination of an evidence-based intervention

Objectives To describe the characteristics and repertoires of community practitioners serving families involved in child physical abuse that may inform training and treatment dissemination efforts. The aims are to: (a) describe the background characteristics of these clinicians; (b) document their most common intervention techniques; (c) examine clinicians’ attitudes toward manualized treatment; and (d) understand the organizational climate of community agencies. Method Practitioners from nine different agencies who have worked with cases in which there was child physical abuse ( n = 77) completed focus group discussions and three self-report questionnaires. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were conducted in tandem. Results Practitioners reported that they most often focused on family issues and employed family therapy techniques. Although treatment manuals were important, it was difficult to determine how practitioners used or would use these materials with families. An almost equal number of concerns and benefits were raised regarding using manuals in treatment. There was moderate agreement in how practitioners perceived their work environments. Age and attainment of a graduate degree were positively related to greater caring and job satisfaction, respectively, while length of time at a given agency was positively related to greater reports of emotional exhaustion on a measure of organizational climate. Conclusions Given the promising benefits of evidence-based treatments for child abuse, it is important that researchers begin to form partnerships with community agencies that will lead to the dissemination and evaluation of effective treatment strategies.

Benchmarking occupational stressors and strain levels for rural nurses and other health sector workers

This study was conducted with 1097 employees (866 females, 217 males, 14 did not indicate gender) in a regional Health Service District who completed the Queensland Public Agency Staff Survey in 2002. Nurses' results on measures of organizational climate and psychological outcomes were compared with those of other employees in the Health Service District. Nurses reported less favourable outcomes on all but one of the organizational climate scales, and also were found to have more distress (strain), and lower levels of morale, Job Satisfaction and Quality of Worklife than others. Results were generally less favourable for nurses working in the large regional hospital and in mental health than for nurses in other facilities. The study has implications for recruiting and retaining nurses at a time when shortages within the profession are chronic.

Validating the organizational climate measure: links to managerial practices, productivity and innovation

AbstractThis paper describes the development and validation of a multidimensional measure of organizational climate, the Organizational Climate Measure (OCM), based upon Quinn and Rohrbaugh's Competing Values model. A sample of 6869 employees across 55 manufacturing organizations completed the questionnaire. The 17 scales contained within the measure had acceptable levels of reliability and were factorially distinct. Concurrent validity was measured by correlating employees' ratings with managers' and interviewers' descriptions of managerial practices and organizational characteristics. Predictive validity was established using measures of productivity and innovation. The OCM also discriminated effectively between organizations, demonstrating good discriminant validity. The measure offers researchers a relatively comprehensive and flexible approach to the assessment of organizational members' experience and promises applied and theoretical benefits. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

Toward a Shortened Measure of Organizational Climate in Tourism and Hospitality

The purpose of this study was to investigate the properties of a shortened, and therefore more conveniently applied, version of the seven dimension Tourism and Hospitality Organizational Climate Scale (THOCS). Responses to the revised instrument, the THOCS-R, from 400 employees of a single, large tourism organization were analyzed. Subscales of the THOCS-R demonstrated levels of reliability ranging from acceptable to high. Confirmatory factor analysis provided support for the notion that the THOCS-R reliably measured four dimensions of the original instrument. Analyses were also conducted to investigate whether the THOCS-R has any explanatory utility in the prediction of other organizational variables. Regression analyses found the four replicated climate dimensions to explain 19.36% of the variation in employee turnover intentions and 20.07% of the variation in employee perceptions of customer satisfaction. It was concluded that the THOCS-R reliably measures four dimensions of organizational climate in tourism employees and is potentially a useful tool to examine the impact of climate on organizational outcomes.

The impact of organizational climate and strategic fit on firm performance

AbstractA firm's organizational climate—its degree of trust, morale, conflict, rewards equity, leader credibility, resistance to change, and scapegoating—helps determine its success. Likewise, organizational strategy—the firm's commitment to capital investment, innovation, quality, and the like—has also been found to be an important determinant of firm performance. However, prior work has most often explored the impact of climate and strategy separately, and not in tandem. In our study, we develop a measure of organizational climate comprised of tension, resistance to change, and conflict, and go on to show that at least for some pairings of a firm's climate and its strategy, there is a negative effect on return on assets (ROA). © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

PERSONALITY AND SITUATIONAL PATTERN DIFFERENCES ACROSS THREE WORK GROUPS: A COMPARATIVE EXAMINATION OF WORKER PERSONALITY AND ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE USING THREE PATTERN‐EXTRACTION ANALYSES

Measures of personality and organizational climate were subjected to three different analytical methods that extract patterns from data: Discriminant, Classification and Regression Trees, and neural network classification analysis. Risk, openness, rewards, and neuroticism (rather than conscientiousness) emerged as key variables in differentiating among three similar work groups. Results of the analyses support the central hypothesis of ASA theory of greater variance in personality across compared to within organizations and an interactionist paradigm between person and environment. Implications for ASA theory and for personnel selection are discussed.

Leadership in education: Effective U.K. college principals

AbstractCollege leaders face increasing challenges to manage complex responsibilities. They must possess a wide variety of managerial and leadership skills to be successful in academic environments, which are beginning to resemble more traditional organizational frameworks. The study examined in this article explored the relationships among managerial style, organizational climate, and several measures of college‐student performance with a sample of British further education college principals (similar to U.S. community college presidents). While considering the influence of various background factors, such as the size of the college, student funding, and years of experience, several significant relationships emerged demonstrating a significant association between principals' managerial behaviors and measures of college and student performance.

Measuring progress in clinical governance: assessing the reliability and validity of the Clinical Governance Climate Questionnaire.

Despite a lack of conceptual clarity, the importance of cultural change to clinical governance is widely accepted. While generic measures of organizational performance, culture and climate are available, their relationship to clinical governance is unclear. Consequently, there is currently no valid and reliable measure of clinical governance climate. This study aimed to address the deficiency by reducing a pool of clinical governance climate indicators developed via previous qualitative research, describing a latent factor structure and assessing the internal consistency and external validity of the factor model. The resultant instrument, the Clinical Governance Climate Questionnaire (CGCQ), attained high internal consistency and external (discriminant and construct) validity in a study population of healthcare Trust staff. It consists of 60 items distributed across six sub-scales of clinical governance: planned and integrated quality improvement; proactive risk management; absence of unjust blame and punishment; working with colleagues; training and development; and organizational learning. The measure enables those charged with leading the clinical governance agenda in UK healthcare organizations to assess the progress of organizational development initiatives, highlighting areas requiring particular attention. They might also be of interest to those concerned about the negative unintended consequences of performance management.

Leadership effects on organizational climate and financial performance: Local leadership effect in chain organizations

Leadership research to date has mainly focused on leaders' subjective effects. In this study, we examine the effect of different leadership styles on two financial measures of organizational performance and three measures of organizational climate in 50 supermarket stores of a large supermarket chain in the Netherlands. Our findings show a clear relationship of local leadership with the financial performance and organizational climate in the stores. The findings also show that the leadership styles have differential effects. Charismatic leadership and consideration have a substantial effect on climate and financial performance in the small stores, suggesting the relevance of personal leadership of the store manager in these small stores. Initiating structure leadership had no effect on financial results or organizational climate, either in the small stores or in the large stores. Based on these findings, we have formulated some avenues for further research.

Job Involvement And Organizational Climate

This study was aimed at finding the relationship between job involvement and organizational climate. Data were collected from 600 subjects which include 150 junior workers (120 males and 30 females), 30 supervisors (27 males and 3 females) and 20 managers (18 males and 2 females) totalling 200 subjects from each of the three manufacturing industries in Lagos, Nigeria. Analysing the data with a Pearson's product-moment correlation statistics, estimates between the 9 measures of organizational climate and job involvement were shown. The results indicated that structure and responsibility had significantly positive relations with job involvement. Reward had a positive but non-significant relation with it. Warmth climate had a significantly negative relation while risk, support, standard of performance, conflict and identity all had negative but non-significant relations with job involvement. Analysing the data further, the hierarchical/multiple regression of sex, occupational level, type of industry, personal/demographic and organizational factors indicated that work satisfaction, age, type of industry and organizational climate variables like responsibility and warmth are the significant factors that can influence job involvement. Only felt-responsibility had a significantly positive influence on job involvement at p < .01. Analysing the data with One-way ANOVA showed that there are significant differences in the job involvement among the three categories of workers and the three industries at pIFE Psychologia (2002) 10(1), 44-59

The Development of the Organizational Climate Index for High Schools: Its Measure and Relationship to Faculty Trust

A parsimonious measure of organizational climate of high schools is developed and tested in this research. The Organizational Climate Index (OCI) captures open and healthy dimensions of high school climates at the student, teacher, principal, and community levels. Next the relationship between the climate of schools and faculty trust is examined in a large, diverse sample of high schools (N=97). Different dimensions of high school climate explain distinct aspects of faculty trust-faculty trust in colleagues, in principals, and in clients (students and parents).

Testing the reliability and validity of a measure of safety climate.

The lack of compliance with universal precautions (UP) is well documented across a wide variety of healthcare professions and has been reported both before and after the enactment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's Bloodborne Pathogens Standard. Gershon, Karkashian, and Felknor (1994) found that several factors correlated significantly with healthcare workers' lack of compliance with UP, including a measure of organizational safety climate (e.g., the employees' perception of their organizational culture and practices regarding safety). We conducted a secondary analysis using data from a cross-sectional survey of a convenience sample of 1,746 healthcare workers at risk of occupational exposure to bloodborne pathogens to assess the validity and reliability of Gershon's measure of safety climate. Findings revealed no relationship between safety climate and employees' gender, age, education, tenure in position, profession, hours worked per day, perceived risk, attitude toward risk, and training. An association was demonstrated between safety climate and (1) healthcare worker compliance with UP and (2) the availability of personal protective equipment, providing support for the construct validity of this measure of safety climate. These findings could be used by occupational health professionals to assess employees' perceptions of the safety culture and practices in the workplace and to guide the institution's risk management efforts in association with U.P.

Organizational Climate and Student Achievement: A Parsimonious and Longitudinal View

Health and openness metaphors are used to develop measures of organizational climate. In addition to socioeconomic status, Environmental Press, Collegial Leadership, Teacher Professionalism, and Academic Press are aspects of climate that make significant, independent contributions to student achievement in basic skills and explain a substantial amount of the variance. Moreover, the influence of school climate on achievement is enduring over several years. The proposed climate framework underscores important linkages between the institutional, managerial, technical, and client levels in service organizations such as schools.

Worksite Health and Safety Climate: Scale Development and Effects of a Health Promotion Intervention

Background.Environmental influences on health and health behavior have an important place in research on worksite health promotion. We tested the validity and internal consistency of a new measure of organizational health and safety climate that was used in a large randomized trial of a worksite cancer prevention program (the Working Well Trial). The resulting scales then were applied to assess intervention effects.Method.This study uses data from a subset of 40 worksites in the Working Well Trial. Employees at 20 natural gas pipeline worksites and 20 rural electrical cooperatives completed a cross-sectional questionnaire at baseline and 3-year follow-up.Results.A factor analysis of this self-report instrument produced a two-factor solution. The resulting health and safety climate scales had good internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.74 and 0.82, respectively) and concurrent validity. The health climate scale was correlated more highly with organizational measures that were indicative of a supportive health climate than those indicating supportive safety climate, while the reverse was true of the safety climate scale. Changes in health climate were associated with the number of smoking and smokeless tobacco programs offered at the worksites at the time of the 3-year follow-up (r= 0.46 and 0.42, respectively). The scales were not correlated with most employee health behaviors. The health climate scores increased at intervention worksites, compared with scores at control worksites (F[1,36] = 7.57,P= 0.009).Conclusions.The health and safety climate scales developed for this study provide useful instruments for measuring organizational change related to worksite health promotion activities. The Working Well Intervention resulted in a significant improvement in worksite health climate.

COLLECTIVE CLIMATES: A TEST OF THEIR SOCIOPSYCHOLIGICAL SIGNIFICANCE.

This article contributes to debate on the measurement of organizational climate. Use of means cloaks wide variations in individual perceptions. Use of clustering techniques to identify groups of pe...