Search results

Over the past decade, the U.S. workforce has become increasingly diverse. In response, scholars and practitioners have sought to uncover ways to leverage this increasing diversity to enhance business performance. To date, research evidence has failed to provide consistent support for the value of diversity to organizational effectiveness. Accordingly, scholars have shifted their attention to diversity management as a means to fully realize the potential benefits of diversity in organizations. The principal aim of this chapter is to review the current wisdom on the study of diversity climate in organizations. Defined as the extent that employees view an organization as utilizing fair personnel practices and socially integrating all personnel into the work environment, diversity climate has been proposed as a catalyst for unlocking the full value of diversity in organizations. During our review, we discuss the existent individual- and aggregate-level research, describe the theoretical foundations of such work, summarize the key research findings and themes gleaned from work in each domain, and note the limitations of diversity climate research. Finally, we highlight the domains of uncertainty regarding diversity climate research, and offer recommendations for future work that can enhance knowledge of diversity climate effects on organizational outcomes.

Safety climate plays an important role in the high-risk construction industry. Advances have been made in the understanding of construction safety climate in terms of four interrelated themes, specifically, its definition, measurement, antecedents and consequences. However, knowledge remains fragmented as the studies are scattered, and a systematic review covering these four themes is lacking. To address this research gap, this study aims to perform a systematic literature review of construction safety climate literature regarding the four themes.

Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol guidelines, 178 eligible articles were obtained. This study provided thematic analysis of the 178 papers to identify what is known and what is not yet fully known regarding the four themes of construction safety climate. This study also conducted a descriptive analysis to identify the influential scholars, keywords, theories and research methods used by the literature, and finally presented an integrative framework directing future research.

The literature has not reached a consensus on the definition and measurement of construction safety climate. While it has identified the impact of safety climate on both behavioral and accident consequences, it has paid less attention to the antecedents and their underlying mechanisms regarding safety climate. Fang D. and Lingard H. are identified as the most influential authors in this field. “Questionnaire” and “safety behavior” are the keywords most closely related to safety climate. Unfortunately, the existing evidence for the causal relationships between safety climate and its antecedents and consequences is weak, as many studies lack clear theoretical substance, use a concurrent research design and focus only on individual-level climate perceptions. Finally, to support the development of construction safety climate around the four themes, potential research directions and research methods supporting them are illustrated.

This review makes contributions by integrating existing construction studies covering its definition, measurement, antecedents and consequences. This review also makes contributions to specific themes: no review exists on the antecedents of construction safety climate, and this review fills that gap; with regard to consequences, the existing reviews focus either on safety outcomes or safety behavior, but this review included both of them and further elaborated the different theories underpinning the relationships between safety climate and them. It is hoped that this systematic review will be helpful to the research community toward developing a nomologic network and promoting knowledge integration with respect to construction safety climate.

Organizational climates reflect employee perceptions of the way organizational culture is actualized and most studies explore one or two climates only. The present study uses a positive organizational behavior approach and conservation of resources theory to explore a global positive climate (GPC) encompassing five climates: perceive organizational support, psychosocial safety climate, organizational mindfulness, worthy work and inclusion climate. The GPC is used to predict employee engagement and job satisfaction, with psychological capital as a mediator. Beyond this, high performance work systems (HPWS) are included as a moderator of GPC to test the potential way HR practices might interact with positive climates to achieve superior outcomes.

A large sample (n = 1,007) of New Zealand workers across a wide range of occupations and industries. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the data was used and moderated mediation tests were conducted.

GPC is significantly related to psychological capital, employee engagement and job satisfaction, and while psychological capital also predicts the outcomes, and has some mediation effects on GPC influence, GPC remains significant. HPWS is significantly related to psychological capital only and interacts with GPC leading to the highest psychological capital and employee engagement. Significant moderated mediation effects are found, with the indirect effect of GPC increasing as HPWS increase.

This research is important because it provides empirical evidence around a GPC and shows how organizations and HRM managers can enhance key employee attitudes through building a strong climate and providing important HR practices.

Beyond unique effects from GPC, the findings provide useful theoretical insights toward conservation of resources theory.

This paper aims to describe research which was undertaken exploring organisational climate within a prison setting and the potential directional affects of work and home. The purpose of the research was to develop a conceptual framework of the impact of climate on social and emotional functioning.

Using the competing values framework 149 prison staff completed a questionnaire designed to explore the interactional effects of boundary theory, organisational climate and well being.

It was found that all staff placed emphasis on the control quadrant of the organisational climate. In addition, the data revealed a moderately curvilinear relationship between length of service and climate engagement on each of the quadrants. These results parallel other research in relation to attitude change. The desire for higher integration was associated with an increased impact on work/home life and a desire for, and achievement of, segmentation does not directly impact on subjective well being. The research concluded that viewing integration and segmentation along a continuum in relation to the prison service role is too simplistic. Rather, these should be viewed in a more complex way and a model for this is proposed. The findings also indicate that employees with high identity consistency (integration) also had a more engaged experience of the prison climate whereas employees with lower identity consistency (segmentation) were less engaged.

There are several implications of the research. Firstly, further research is required to explore the potential impact of attempting to change a prison climate in terms of understanding why certain climate quadrants may be preferred by staff in different roles. The findings indicate that where certain quadrant preferences occur these may be functional to prison safety and alteration of these should be considered carefully. The research also indicated that current theories of boundary management may have some applicability but that within a prison setting these are complex and influenced by both internal organizational factors and those within the wider community. Further research into the concept of “dirty work” and the impact this may have on climate would be of benefit.

This is the first research to explore the role of organizational climate within a prison setting and to consider factors which are specific to a prison environment which may influence the organizational climate. This paper is of value to those who are interested in prison settings and how the environment can influence employee experiences of working in a prison and how identity consistence can influence experiences of work.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the diffusion of ISO 14001-based environmental management system (EMS) on five key organisational functions, namely production, procurement, sales, logistics, and R&D. In examining the EMS diffusion, this paper focuses on two aspects of diffusion: the extent of diffusion of EMS and the balance of EMS diffusion across the five organisational functions.

Data were collected from 286 companies in Australia which were certified to ISO 14001. The respondents are personnel in the company who hold responsibility in managing the EMS.

The results show that the extent of diffusion of EMS has a positive effect on green products, green processes, and green supply chain management. In addition, diffusion variation (imbalance) has a negative effect on green product and green supply chain management. This study demonstrates the importance of both the depth and the balanced diffusion of EMS across different organisational functions in driving environmental management practices.

The results support the theory of organisational climate which emphasises the importance of both climate level and climate strength. In the context of our study, firms with high both extensive (climate level) and balanced diffusion (climate strength) of EMS will produce better environmental innovations than those which only have climate level.

The results provide insights for managers to consider the extent and balance of diffusion of EMS in their organisational functions as an indicator of the implementation of EMS in their organisations.

The findings imply the need for expanding the scope of collaborations beyond the firm's level, that is from being intra-organisational to inter-organisational by involving supply chain partners (primarily customers and suppliers). When the diffusion of environmental initiatives (including ISO 14001 EMS) can be extended to supply chain partners, the environmental effects will also be significantly larger and wider compared to when it is confined in individual firms.

This paper is one of the first to study the extent and balance of diffusion of EMS within organisations and its impact on environmental management practices

While emotions and feelings arise in the singular personality, they may also develop a normative dimensionality in a plural agency. The authors identify the cybernetic systemic principles of how emotions might be normatively regulated and affect plural agency performance. The purpose of this paper is to develop a generic cultural socio-cognitive trait theory of plural affective agency (the emotional organization), involving interactive cognitive and affective traits, and these play a role within the contexts of Mergers and Acquisitions (M & A).

The authors integrate James Gross’ model of emotion regulation with the earlier work on normative personality in the context of Mindset Agency Theory. The agency is a socio-cognitive entity with attitude, and operates through traits that control thinking and decision making. These traits are epistemically independent and operate on a bipolar scale; with the alternate poles having an auxiliary function to each other – where the traits may take intermediary “balanced” states between the poles.

Processes of affect regulation are supposed to go through three stages: first, identification (affective situation awareness); second, elaboration of affect is constituted through schemas of emotional feeling, which include emotion ideologies generating emotional responses to distinct contextual situations; third, execution: in the operative system primary emotions are assessed through operative intelligence for any adaptive information and the capacity to organize action; and turned into action, i.e. responses, through cultural feeling rules and socio-cultural display rules, conforming to emotion ideologies.

This new theory provides guidance for framing multilevel interaction where smaller collectives (as social systems) are embedded into larger social systems with a culture, an emotional climate and institutions. Thus, it is providing a generic theoretical frame for M & A analyses, where a smaller social unit (the acquired) is to be integrated into a larger social unit (the acquirer).

Understanding interdependencies between cognition and emotion regulation is a prerequisite of managerial intelligence, which is at demand during M & A processes. While managerial intelligence may be grossly defined as the capacity of management to find an appropriate and fruitful balance between action and learning orientation of an organization, its affective equivalent is the capacity of management to find a fruitful balance between established emotion expression and learning alternate forms of emotion expression.

Understanding interdependencies between cognition and emotion is a prerequisite of social, cultural and emotional intelligence. The provided theory can be easily linked with empirical work on the emergence of a cultural climate of fear within societies. Thus, “Affective Agency Theory” also has a bearing for political systems’ analysis, what, however, is beyond the scope of this paper.

The paper builds on the recently developed Mindset Agency Theory, elaborating it through the introduction of the dimension of affect, where cognitive and affective traits interact and become responsible for patterns of behaviour. The model is providing a framework which links emotion expression and emotion regulation with cognitive analysis.

This paper aims to investigate how chief executive officer (CEO) responsible leadership impacts corporate social responsibility (CSR) and organization performance by considering diverse organizational climates (including ethical, service and initiative climates) as mediators and CEO founder status as a moderator.

This study analyzed survey data from 212 service organizations in China with structural equation modeling.

The results clearly established that CEO responsible leadership played a crucial role in augmenting both CSR and organization performance by shaping positive organizational climates. Notably, CEO responsible leadership significantly fostered ethical, service and initiative climates. Furthermore, an ethical climate promoted CSR and organization performance, whereas service and initiative climates specifically enhanced organization performance. Additionally, responsible CEOs with founder status exhibited a higher propensity for enhancing ethical, service and initiative climates within service organizations.

Service organizations should take measures to build CEO responsible leadership, especially for CEOs with founder status. Furthermore, service organizations should motivate employees to reach consensus on ethical conducts, superior service and proactive approach to work.

First, the findings on CEO responsible leadership’s effects on CSR and organization performance extend the research on responsible leadership outcomes. Second, this paper adds to responsible leadership literature through exploring the mediating effects of ethical, service and initiative climates. Finally, the finding on the moderating role of founder CEOs offers a novel perspective regarding the boundary condition of the effects of CEO responsible leadership.

Improving employees’ change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is important because of the work content and service nature of the National Immigration Agency (NIA). The purpose of this paper, which targeted immigration workers using the work design model (knowledge oriented), leadership types and organizational climate as perspectives, is to study immigration workers’ change-oriented OCB. Inspecting the knowledge-oriented work characteristics (KOWCs) of the NIA of Taiwan to find ways of stimulating change-oriented OCB through employees’ high self-efficacy is also critical. The investigators also explored how transformational leadership and organizational climate directly affect employees’ change-oriented OCB in a cross-level organization.

The subject of this research is the frontline immigration workers of Taiwan’s NIA, with its entire staff on duty at the country’s airports and ports as targets of the research. This study used a total of 312 questionnaires.

At the group level, transformational leadership shows significant positive influence on organizational climate. KOWCs can positively influence self-efficacy and affect change-oriented OCB on an individual basis; similarly, self-efficacy can also positively impact the individual’s change-oriented OCB. In addition, transformational leadership and organizational climate have a contextual effect on the outcome variable on an individual basis.

This finding is helpful for researching and practicing implications of HRM, such as in further understanding how the motivation from work characteristics, organization’s environment and interpersonal networks can increase employees’ change-oriented OCB.

IT security breaches plague organizations worldwide, yet there continues to be a paucity of comprehensive research models for protective technologies. This study aims to develop an IT security user behavior model focusing on the protective technology anti-spyware which includes organizational climate, a theory of planned behavior (TPB) background variable and elicited salient user beliefs.

A multimethod approach, including interviews and a survey, is used to elicit salient user beliefs and test hypotheses of the influences of perceived IT security climate on those user beliefs and ultimately user behavioral intentions. Primary data were collected through interviews following the prescribed TPB methodology and an offline survey method with 254 valid responses recorded. Partial least squares was used to investigate the hypotheses.

The authors found that attitudinal beliefs – protecting organizational interests for data/privacy, preventing disruptions to work and control beliefs – monetary resources and time constraints mediate significant relationships between IT security climate and attitude and perceived behavioral control, respectively. Implications are discussed.

This study is the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, that uses both interviews and a survey to examine the relationships among IT security climate, elicited user beliefs and behavioral intentions in a TPB-based model for a protective technology.

This study investigates organizational climate under the thriving at work perspective using a network approach. The authors demonstrate how organizational climate functions as a complex system and what relationships between variables from different dimensions are the most important to characterize the construct.

By surveying 119,266 workers from 284 companies based in Brazil, the authors estimated a Gaussian graphical model with LASSO regularization for the complete dataset and for two subsets of cases randomly drawn from the whole dataset. The walktrap algorithm was applied for community detection, and a strong model for measurement invariance was fit to test whether the organizational climate is perceived similarly across groups.

Results show that the networks estimated for both groups are quite consistent, with similar number of communities and items detected. The same pattern was found for the expected influence of each item. Measurement invariance was confirmed, showing that organizational climate is perceived similarly in both groups. The most important community detected and whose items have higher levels of centrality was organizational commitment, followed by a community centered around macro-organizational aspects covering cultural integrity, organizational agility and responsible leadership.

Studies in the field have attested to the possibility of investigating the phenomenon from four (Campbell et al., 1970) to over 80 dimensions (Koys and DeCottis, 1991). As a result, since several dimensions have been produced to investigate organizational climate, there is no consensus on the quality and number of dimensions that should be considered to measure such a vast and multifaceted construct. Built on thriving at work perspective, eight dimensions were devised to cover a wide range of characteristics that distinguish organizational climate, including those related to Industry 4.0 (Coetzee, 2019). However, one may argue that a few dimensions, namely social responsibility, diversity and inclusion, or even more items describing work-life balance could expand the depth and breadth of the instrument and potentially trigger new associations that might eventually impose a new logic to the comprehension of climate as a system. Future studies combining the dimensions investigated in this study with other dimensions are therefore highly recommended for an even more comprehensive investigation.

The results of this investigation show how to apply psychological networks to gain insights into different variables and dimensions of organizational climate. These findings can be used for the development of organizational policies focused on the most relevant aspects of organizational climate. This information would allow organizations to go beyond simply describing the individual frequencies for each item and could even be used to create a weighted scoring model that could prioritize variables with higher levels of centrality.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that investigates organizational climate using psychological networks; it provides a better understanding of the relationships established between items from different dimensions as opposed to the common cause framework whose focus is on the investigation of dimensions separately.