Factors of Climate

Organizations in the 21st century are facing more challenges than ever before. These challenges are not unique to any specific organization or industry, but affect all organizations, regardless of their structure or size. organizational climate in particular is constantly challenged by changes impacting organizations today. To survive and outdo their competitors, organizations are constantly seeking to improve their performance. Authors such as Brown and Leigh think that organizational climate is becoming more important than ever before because organizations need to ensure that those individuals who add value to the bottom line will want to stay in the organization and will want to continue pouring their effort into their work to the benefit of the organization.

According to Watkin and Hubbard, high-performing organizations have climates with particular measurable characteristics, which has shown how organizational climate can directly account for up to 30% of the variance in key business performance measures. This is supported by research that examined the relationship between the way in which employees describe their work environments and the relative performance success of these environments. Watkin and Hubbard contend that climate does make a difference to organizations' performance because 'it indicates how energizing the work environment is for employees'. There is, however, clearly more to an organization's performance than an 'energized employee' or the presence of certain organizational and leadership characteristics: 'productivity … also depends on the morale which governs discretionary effort – the willingness to go the extra mile'.

Researchers have been interested in understanding how employees' perceptions of the work environment influence their level of job satisfaction since Mayo's studies at Western Electric. These studies found that environmental factors influence worker productivity and morale. Bisconti and Solomon report that an organizational climate that allows a high degree of autonomy and nurtures relationships among peers, supervisors and subordinates results in more satisfied workers.

organizations that are able to create environments that employees perceive as benign and in which they are able to achieve their full potential are seen as a key source of competitive advantage. organizational climate can therefore be regarded as a key variable in successful organizations.

Organizational climate

Organizational climate is a meaningful construct with significant implications for understanding human behavior in organizations. This is evident from all the research conducted and published on the role and value of organizational climate in organizations and its impact on various organizational outcomes over the past 50 years.

A number of definitions of organizational climate have been formulated in the various studies on the concept and although a precise and unitary definition of climate does not exist, researchers agree that certain characteristics describe the construct and differentiate it from other concepts. These characteristics are as follows:

• Climate is generally considered to be a molar construct that can change over time.
• It is perceived by and shared among organizational members, which can result in consensus among individuals.
• It consists of global impressions of the organization that members form through interacting with each other and organizational policies, structures and processes.
• Climate perceptions are descriptions of environmental events and conditions rather than evaluations of them.
• The climate construct is multidimensional.
• It refers to the 'feeling of an organization'.
• Climate can potentially influence an individual's behavior.

For the purposes of this research, definitions by Gerber and Moran and Volkwein were integrated. organizational climate is defined as the shared perceptions, feelings and attitudes that organizational members have about the fundamental elements of the organization, which reflect the established norms, values and attitudes of the organization's culture and influences individuals' behavior positively or negatively.

Organizational climate has a long history in industrial and organizational psychology and organizational behavior. However, Kurt Lewin was the first researcher to study the concept and argued that behavior is a function of the person and the environment.

The study of organizational climate gathered momentum in the late 1970s with a focus on integrating climate research into the broader field of organizational studies and distinguishing climate from similar topics such as satisfaction and organizational structure.

According to Moran and Volkwein, understanding how climates are formed became important, because it was believed that it would provide a deeper comprehension of the concept and lead to further conceptual and methodological progress. Initially, organizational climate was viewed as an objective construct consisting of organizational attributes such as an organization's size, structure and policies. It is these actual conditions that play a primary role in determining people's attitudes, values and perceptions of organizational events. This approach, however, is criticized and its validity questioned, because it does not consider the individual's perception of organizational attributes.

Contrary to the structural approach, the perceptual approach postulates that individuals are influenced by their perceptions of, or the psychological meaning they attach to, organizational characteristics. Hence, this approach can be seen as 'personalistic', in the sense that climate is an individual perception. Criticisms of this approach are, firstly, that the primary source of climate is placed mainly within individuals, thereby negating the possibility of a composition theory. Hence it cannot be seen as an organizational attribute. A second criticism is that it assumes meaning as something that individuals bring to, and force on, organizational processes and events rather than as a result of the interaction between organizational members.

The interactive approach builds on the aforementioned approaches and combines the objectivism of the structural approach and the subjectivism of the perceptual approach. The underlying assumption of the interactive approach is that organizational climate is the result of the interaction of individuals in response to their situation, which results in the shared agreement of organizational members. This approach provides a link between the structural and the perceptual approaches because it acknowledges that meaning is formed when the individual intentionally interacts with objects and people because it provides meaning for him or her.

The approaches discussed above fail to take into consideration the influence that organizational culture has on the perceptions of individuals and on how they interact with one another.

The final approach is referred to as the cultural approach. This approach does not focus on the formal properties of organizations, nor does it concern itself with the subjective psychological characteristics of the individual and how that individual combines these two approaches. According to the cultural approach, organizational climate is shaped by individuals within a group who interact and share the same abstract frame of reference, organizational culture, as they learn to deal with the organization's demands. This approach emphasizes the interaction of individuals as a source of climate, a view it shares with the interactive approach above. However, the cultural approach includes the role of organizational culture as a key factor in the development of organizational climate.

Levels of climate

The definitions of climate by various researchers posit the idea that climate exists at three different levels. James and Jones differentiate between organizational climate and psychological climate, with the former term being recommended when climate is regarded as an organizational attribute and the latter when climate is considered to be an individual attribute. Psychological climate is therefore studied at the individual level of analysis, referring to individuals' descriptions of the organization's policies and processes, while organizational climate is measured by means of the average perceptions of organizational members, referring to a collective description of the same environment.

Hellriegel and Slocum propose a group or subsystem climate and state that climate refers to a set of attributes that is perceived about an organization or its subsystems and that may be deduced from the way the organization or subsystem deals with its members and the environment. On the basis of this analysis, Field and Abelson postulate that climate has evolved from being considered solely an organizational attribute to an attribute that may be subsystem specific (group or individual). According to these authors, the distinguishing mark of climate, regardless of the level of analysis, is that it has enduring qualities, which can be measured, and influences the behavior of organizational members.

Organizational climate and culture

The concepts of organizational climate and organizational culture are often used interchangeably, with researchers in organizational studies treating the concepts as if they were identical. organizational climate and organizational culture are similar concepts. Not only do they both describe the experiences of employees and assist us in understanding psychological phenomena in particular organizations but they also provide explanations regarding how organizations influence behavior, attitudes and the well-being of individuals, why some organizations are more able to adapt to environmental changes and why some organizations are more successful than others.

Schneider succinctly summarises the differences between these two concepts by highlighting that organizational climate describes events and experiences and represents the patterns of behavior of employees, whereas culture is explored when individuals are asked why these patterns of shared values, common assumptions and beliefs exist. In the literature, culture is viewed as being more deeply rooted in the organization and is based on employees' values, beliefs and assumptions. This is in contrast to organizational climate, which is a ‘snapshot' of a particular time in an organization and is measured by a range of dimensions. Denison, Gerber and Moran and Volkwein provide a list of differences between these constructs, which is presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Summary of the differences between organizational climate and organizational culture

Organizational climate dimensions

From the above discussion, it is clear that definitions and approaches to organizational climate are diverse. In the literature, it is evident that the same applies to the dimensions and measurement of organizational climate because various researchers use a wide variety of dimensions to assess organizational climate. Although many dimensions have been identified, this research utilized dimensions that were developed specifically for this study. Comparisons were drawn between these dimensions and those of Coetsee, Tustin and Wiley and Brooks, and there is a great deal of overlap among the models. The dimensions of this study compare well with those of other models and provide an encompassing construct of organizational climate. In addition, they include dimensions, such as diversity management, that are applicable to the South African environment – hence the use of this model in this research. This leads to the first hypothesis of the research.

Hypothesis 1: A 12-factor structure underlies the organizational climate questionnaire in accordance with the 12 identified dimensions of the climate-measuring instrument. Table 2 summaries these dimensions.

Table 2:  Dimensions of organizational climate

Job satisfaction

According to Cranny, Smith and Stone, job satisfaction can be defined as an affective or emotional reaction that an employee has towards a job that is the result of his or her comparison of actual outcomes with expected or deserved outcomes. Job satisfaction has also been defined in terms of attitudes that individuals have towards their jobs. Schneider and Snyder define job satisfaction as a personal evaluation of the current conditions of the job or the outcomes that arise as a result of having a job. Sempane, Rieger and Roodt appear to agree with this definition, stating that job satisfaction refers to the individual's perception and evaluation of the job. According to these authors, the individual's perception is influenced by his or her unique circumstances such as needs, values and expectations. Therefore jobs are evaluated by people on the basis of factors that are important to them. Although the definitions of job satisfaction are varied, it is generally considered to be an attitude or feeling that one has about one's job that is either positive or negative.

According to Locke, for researchers to have a clear understanding of job attitudes, they need to know the various factors that have an influence in the job. Research indicates that these factors can be divided into two distinct dimensions, namely extrinsic and intrinsic.

Extrinsic dimensions form part of the job situation, are influenced by others and are beyond the employee's control. Examples are factors such as the work itself, pay, promotion opportunities, working conditions, supervision and co-workers. Intrinsic rewards are self-regulated and a direct result of the individual's performance. Lawler explains that intrinsic rewards satisfy higher-order needs, for example feelings of accomplishment and achievement and the satisfaction of utilising one's skills and abilities. Robbins, Odendaal and Roodt point out that intrinsic factors, such as advancement, recognition, responsibility and achievement, appear to be related to job satisfaction.

Job satisfaction can be measured in two ways – namely, by the facet approach or the global approach. The former refers to assessing how employees feel about various aspects of the job such as rewards (pay or fringe benefits), job conditions, people on the job (supervisors and co-workers) and the work itself. The latter approach measures job satisfaction by directly asking individuals how they generally feel about their jobs.

This study defined job satisfaction as the feeling individuals have about their jobs. Hence this research was concerned with measuring the affective aspect of job satisfaction using the global approach.

Organizational climate and job satisfaction

There are numerous studies investigating the relationship between organizational climate and job satisfaction, with many researchers finding evidence to support the relationship between the two constructs.

In a review of studies investigating organizational climate and job satisfaction, Peek found that organizational climates that exhibit characteristics such as having a high degree of autonomy, providing opportunities for employees, nurturing relationships among employees, showing interest in and concern for their employees, recognizing employees' accomplishments and holding employees in high regard result in more satisfied workers. Similarly, Brief found that salary, benefits and advancement opportunities were components of organizational climate that had a direct influence on job satisfaction.

In summary, organizational climate and job satisfaction are distinct but related constructs. organizational climate is focused on organizational/institutional attributes as perceived by organizational members, while job satisfaction addresses perceptions and attitudes that people have towards and exhibit about their work.

Although a recent study conducted in a South African call center found job satisfaction to be strongly correlated to organizational climate, studies investigating the relationship between organizational climate and job satisfaction are less frequent in the literature today, especially in South Africa. A possible explanation could be that studies tend to focus more on organizational culture.

Flowing from the above discussion, the following hypotheses were formulated:

Hypothesis 2: There is a strong positive relationship between the dimensions of organizational climate and job satisfaction.

Hypothesis 3: organizational climate dimensions that are perceived as being personal to or having a direct impact on the individual have a greater influence on job satisfaction than organizational climate factors that are perceived as being external to or influencing the individual indirectly.

Research objectives

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between organizational climate and job satisfaction in an information and communication technology (ICT) organization in South Africa.

The methodology and the statistical approach used will be discussed next. This will be followed by a discussion of the results and an indication of whether the results support the stated hypothesis.