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Article Excerpt
It has long been clear that behaviour is a function both of a person's characteristics and the nature of his or her environment. Important environmental features in work settings have sometimes been brought together under the general heading of 'climate', usually measured through individuals' perceptions of their organization's policies and practices (e.g. Ashkenasy, Wilderom, & Peterson, 2000; Schneider, 1990). Associated research has investigated perceptions of 'culture', sometimes taking measures of perceived culture through questionnaires similar to those applied in climate studies (e.g. Payne, 2000; Reichers & Schneider, 1990). As described by Denison (1996, p. 624), 'culture' 'refers to the deep structure of organizations', whereas 'climate' mainly concerns 'those aspects of the social environment that are consciously perceived by organizational members'.
Measures of climate seek to represent employees' experiences of important organizational values and processes, and thus have often been thought of as possible predictors of organizational performance. Four kinds of performance may be suggested: economic (productivity, profitability, etc.), technological (development of new products, etc.), commercial (market share, a specific niche, etc.), and social (effects on customers, suppliers and the public at large) (Bartram, Robertson, & Callinan, 2002). Most research in the area of this paper has examined economic aspects of organizational performance and that approach win be taken here.
Wilderom, Glunk, and Maslowski (2000) located and summarized 10 relevant studies. They reported that, although most of those had found some dimensions of organizational climate to be associated with performance, different climate aspects had emerged as important in different studies. In addition, causal interpretation of observed relationships has been made difficult by a frequent reliance on cross-sectional research designs, obtaining measures of performance for the period immediately before climate is assessed. It is instead desirable to examine climate at one point in time as a possible predictor of performance in a subsequent period.
Two studies that obtained objective organizational performance data later than the assessment of climate were by Denison (1990) and by Gordon and DiTomaso (1992). In the first case, a climate that encouraged employee involvement in company decision making (through individual inputs and between-role collaboration) was found (across 34 firms in 25 different industries) to predict company financial success in subsequent years; however, quantitative support for the importance of three other climate dimensions was not obtained. The study by Gordon and DiTomaso (1992) (across 11 insurance companies) examined aspects of adaptability (a combination of scales to tap action orientation and risk-taking), finding that this climate indicator was positively associated with subsequent financial growth. However, three other aspects of climate were unrelated to financial outcomes.
Research into organizations' climate and performance has thus yielded varying results. This diffuse pattern is likely to arise in part from different studies' use of different indicators of performance, from variations in the temporal sequence of measurement, and from the fact that different kinds of organizations were examined by different researchers. In addition, of particular importance are variations in the intervening processes which may translate an organization's climate into performance.
Kopelman, Brief, and Guzzo (1990) have presented a model to make more explicit those intervening processes. Organizational climate is viewed as influencing organizational productivity (the form of performance considered in the model) through 'cognitive and affective states' and 'salient organizational behaviours'. The former states are primarily employees' work motivation and their feelings of job satisfaction. Those are considered to influence productivity through three kinds of behaviour: attachment behaviours (attending and staying in the organization), role-prescribed behaviours (tasks in one's organizational role) and citizenship behaviours (helpful contributions that are not mandatory).
This model has been developed by Sparrow (2001), who also includes features of person-organization fit and of employees' psychological contract. The psychological contract is viewed as incorporating 'mental, emotional and attitudinal states' and 'salient organizational behaviours', the two principal intervening processes considered by Kopelman and colleagues. The psychological states are seen as linking perceived climate and potential person-organization fit with salient employee behaviours and then with performance at the organizational level. These states include perceived justice and organizational support, work motivation, and feelings of trust, commitment, job involvement and job satisfaction.
There is very little empirical research into the validity of these models. Given that an overall test is unlikely to be practicable in a single study, it is important to examine the possible mediating role of specific elements of the models. Affective variables such as work motivation, job satisfaction, job involvement, organizational commitment, and experienced support and justice tend to be positively intercorrelated (e.g. Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002), and their mediating role in climate-performance associations may turn out to be similar. We will here focus on the affective state of overall job satisfaction, assumed by both Kopelman et al. (1990) and Sparrow (2001) to be a central variable linking organizational climate with salient behaviours and performance outcomes.
If job satisfaction is found to mediate climate-performance associations, the importance of climate for organizational performance may be partly explained in evaluative terms (in ways to be illustrated below), and the models summarized above will receive partial support. Furthermore, different findings between studies in the literature may turn out to be partly due to variations in the affective tone of the climate dimensions that happen to have been studied in each case.
The role of employee affect
Employee affect can operate as a mediator between perceived climate and organizational performance only when two conditions are met. Perceptions of climate must statistically overlap with the affective reaction under examination; and that affective reaction must itself be associated with performance. What is known about those two possible relationships?
Affect and climate
Climate has always been viewed as a descriptive concept (referring to facts about the environment), in contrast to, for instance, the evaluative construct of job satisfaction. However, there has long been concern that this conceptual separation is not maintained in practice (e.g. Guion, 1973). Some descriptive items in climate questionnaires have an obviously value-laden content (e.g. 'This company cares for its employees') and many others have implications about personal benefit (e.g. 'This company provides a lot of training'). Description and affect are thus likely to be combined in responses to at least some climate items.
Broader psychological research has pointed to the inseparability of descriptive and evaluative perceptions. For example, an extensive programme of investigations by Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum (1957) revealed that the first factor in perceived meanings of any stimulus was evaluative (with smaller factors of potency and activity); evaluation (a general like or dislike, pro or con, approach or avoid response) is inherent in the perceived meaning of any construct. Although an object of perception may be described in factual terms, evaluative connotations cannot be avoided.
A similar conclusion is suggested by Gibson's (e.g. 1950) model of perception. This emphasizes that perception operates in the service of action, for which we need to anticipate possible threats and opportunities. Gibson points out that we automatically notice significant 'affordances' in the environment. These are properties of a situation that are potentially harmful or beneficial, indicating that certain important actions are either made possible or prevented by the environment. Affordances are inherent in the meaning that we attach to any perceived object, person or situation.
Assessments of personal meaningfulness are also found in studies of organizational climate. Payne, Fineman, and Wall (1976) showed that perceptions of an organization's emphasis on achievement, affiliation, autonomy and understanding were highly correlated with satisfaction with those aspects of climate. Furthermore, the magnitude of this perception-affect correlation was found to correlate .63 with each item's rated importance to the perceivers. 'In other words, the more an area is valued, the higher the relationship between climate and satisfaction' (Payne et al., 1976, p. 53).
James and James's (1989) model argues that environmental perceptions and affects of these kinds are 'components of reciprocally interacting, interdependent, non-recursive, fused processes' (p. 749; see also James, James, & Ashe, 1990, p. 64). The position taken in this paper is that the concepts of climate and affect are conceptually distinct, but that perceptions of climate are usually tinged with some degree of affect. This emotional loading raises the possibility that perceived climate is reflected in performance because of associated job-related feelings; given that climate aspects vary in their affective loading, those aspects of climate with greater loadings may be more associated with organizational performance. Of course, that expectation does not rule out the operation of other mediators, such as organizational behaviours illustrated in the models outlined earlier.
Affect and performance
The second requirement for mediation of climate-performance links by employee affect is that the affect examined should itself be associated with performance. Evidence about affect-performance associations in organizations is growing, and the theoretical bases of possible mediation are becoming clearer.
For example, employees' job satisfaction has been found to be associated with each of the three 'salient organizational behaviours' in the model of Kopelman et al. (1990) (see above). In respect of attachment behaviour, a significant negative correlation with staff turnover is found (Griffeth, Hom, & Gaertner, 2000). In respect of role-prescribed behaviour, Judge, Thoresen, Bono, and Patton (2001) demonstrated that employees' overall job satisfaction is on average correlated .30 (after corrections for measurement unreliability) with their work performance. Staw, Sutton, and Pelled (1994) found that positive emotion at work predicts subsequent employee performance, controlling for prior performance, education level, age and gender. Negative affect in terms of job-related tension is associated with poorer work performance (Jamal, 1984). For the third salient behaviour in the model by Kopelman and colleagues, measures of job satisfaction are significantly associated with discretionary behaviours classed as 'organizational citizenship': helping, loyalty, compliance and so on (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine, & Bachrach, 2000). Similarly, school teachers with greater overall satisfaction are significantly more likely to undertake unpaid overtime work than others (Gechman & Wiener, 1975).
At the organizational level, Ostroff (1992) reported significant associations between teachers' average job satisfaction and several standardized measures of school performance. Koys (2001) found that mean employee satisfaction was significantly correlated with subsequent company profitability, and this association was also observed in relation to company productivity by Hatter, Schmidt, and Hayes (2002). (However, the temporal sequence of measurement is not clear in the latter report.)
What kinds of mechanism may underlie these empirical associations? In general terms, perception on its own generates no impulse for action; that comes from processes that are affective. Possible processes have been illustrated by George and Brief (1992). They discussed how positive mood at work can give rise...
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