Variability in the Organizational Climate of Government Offices and Affective Organizational Commitment

Abstract

This study examined the shared perceptions of 739 professional and technical employees regarding organizational climate and the strength of affective commitment in fifty-one geographically dispersed offices of an agency of state government. The results indicated that the level of affective commitment in these offices could be predicted reliably (adjusted R 2 = .75) from three of the eight dimensions of organizational climate included in the study: goal ambiguity, social cohesion and fairness and equity. Implications of these results with respect to developing effective human resource management strategies in public sector organizations are discussed in detail.

Key words:

• Organizational climate
• affective commitment

Notes

1Psychological climate refers to ‘an individual's cognitive representations of relatively proximal situational conditions, expressed in terms that reflect psychologically meaningful interpretations of the situation’ (James et al., 1978: 786).

2James and colleagues (James et al., 1978; Jones and James, 1979) initially identified five domains of climate, but in subsequent work they included only four domains. Aspects of the fifth domain, organizational and subsystem attributes, were included in the first (i.e. role stress and lack of harmony) and fourth domains (i.e. social environment characteristics) of their model.

3In some respects, the review by Parker et al. (2003) has limited value for the present study. They confounded supervisory support with upward influence, job autonomy with challenge and even organizational commitment with job involvement. Further, only about 14 of the 121 samples pertained to government organizations (and far fewer of these specifically addressed commitment rather than job involvement).

4Park and Rainey (2007: 211) reported a clarity–commitment correlation of .42, but their two-item scale does not correspond to these other studies: ‘Employees participate in developing long-range plans' and ‘My performance standards are clearly linked to my organization's goals and objectives'.

5A complete list of the items included in each measure is provided in Table 1.

6The variance estimate for chance responses in the population of employees (σ² _cr-pop) was set conservatively at 1.0. Formula (3) provided by Burke and Dunlop (2002) can accommodate differing values for measurement reliability (r) and σ² _cr-pop. For example, if r was increased .70 and σ² _cr-pop was increased to 1.2, then the upper threshold of AD_M would be .78.

7Results were identical when no order was imposed for the climate measures to enter into the stepwise regression model.

8Seven office locations with an AD_M greater than .79 were demarcated, so that an alternative stepwise regression analysis could be conducted only for offices with higher interrater agreement (n = 44). Results identified the same three predictors, although the regression coefficient for fairness and equity was higher (β = .38) and the regression coefficient for goal ambiguity was lower (β = −.31). The adjusted R ² for this model was .71, due to the smaller sample of offices.

9Non-supportive evidence also exists. Moon (2000) and Yang and Pandey (2009) reported only a moderate connection between goal clarity and commitment for their respondents; Park and Rainey (2007) could not relate individual perceptions of procedural equity to affective commitment. An explanation for such divergent results may rest not only in differing levels of analysis but also in the measurement of the dependent variable. Moon (2000) broadly incorporated a wide range of items including pride in organizational membership (‘I feel a sense of pride’), job involvement (‘The most important things that happen to me involve my work’), organizational citizenship behaviour (‘I am willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond that normally expected’) and the expressed intention to quit (‘I would be reluctant to change to another employer’). Yang and Pandey (2009) narrowly focused on the normative dimension of organizational commitment with item phrases such as ‘I have a sense of obligation’ and ‘I owe a great deal to my organization’. Park and Rainey's (2007) four-item measure of affective commitment was also not standard, including the generic statement ‘I would recommend the government as a place to work’, as well as an indicator of job satisfaction ‘The work I do is meaningful to me’.