PSYCHOLOGICAL
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EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF WORK AND ORGANIZATIONAL
PSYCHOLOGY,CLIMATE
2002, 11 (3), 325–340
Contemporary perspectives on the study of
psychological climate: A commentary
Michael J. Burke
Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA
Chester C. Borucki
Southampton , MA, USA
Jennifer D. Kaufman
Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA
At the individual level of analysis, we address how work environment perceptions
(psychological climate) are conceptualized and measured with respect to three
perspectives in the applied psychology literature: (1) social constructionist, (2)
general psychological, and (3) multiple stakeholder. Similarities and differences
between these perspectives regarding the hypothesized bases of work environment
perceptions, factor models for capturing these perceptions, and the generality/
specificity of psychological climate factors are discussed. A general framework for
conceptualizing and measuring climate perceptions with respect to different
referents, organizational levels, industries or sectors, and stakeholder groups is
then presented. This framework is posited to include core, generalizable
dimensions associated with each relevant stakeholder group. Finally, we
recommend methods and discuss future research directions related to the
aggregation of individual level climate perceptions to organizational levels.
Since the 1970s, applied psychologists and management researchers have
devoted considerable attention to studying the meaning of individuals’ work
environment perceptions in a variety of public, private, and military
organizations. Individual perceptions of work environment characteristics are
referred to as psychological climate (James & Sells, 1981). Notably, different
perspectives or models have been advanced for explaining the structure of
psychological climate.
Requests for reprints should be addressed to M.J. Burke, A.B. Freeman School of Business and
Department of Psychology, 7 McAlister Dr., Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA.
Email: [email protected] u
This article is based on an invited presentation at the third annual Australian Industrial and
Organizational Psychology Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 1999.
© 2002 Psychology Press Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pp/1359432X.htm l
DOI:10.1080/13594320244000210
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In this article, we review and comment on what we identify as the three
primary perspectives on the meaning of work environment perceptions that have
emerged over this time period: (1) social constructionist or “climate for
something ” (Schneider & Reichers, 1983), (2) general psychological climate,
PCg ( James & James, 1989), and (3) multiple stakeholder (Burke, Borucki, &
Hurley, 1992). These three perspectives not only vary with respect to the
theoretical bases of employee work environment perceptions, but also yield
different organizing frameworks (i.e., first versus higher-order factor models).
Although these perspectives may appear to offer competing explanations for the
meaning of individuals’ work environment perceptions, we argue instead that
these perspectives are complementary. That is, although the three perspectives
differ in regard to their underlying assumptions, we discuss below how these
different assumptions and perspectives can be integrated into a general
framework for conceptualizing and measuring work environment perceptions.
The remainder of this review unfolds as follows. First, at the individual level
of analysis, we address the question of how psychological climate might be
conceptualized and measured. Here, we discuss the bases of employee work
environment perceptions, hypothesized organizing frameworks for employee
work environment perceptions, and the generality/specificity of first- and higherorder factors for each psychological climate perspective. Second, we present a
general framework for conceptualizing and measuring psychological climate
perceptions. Third, we discuss issues, methods, and future research directions
related to the aggregation of psychological climate perceptions.
CONCEPTUALIZING AND MEASURING
PSYCHOLOGICAL CLIMATE
As noted previously, psychological climate has been broadly defined as
individual perceptions of work environment characteristics. Though intuitively
appealing, this definition is lacking with respect to how individuals interpret
environmental attributes in terms of the meaning and significance these
attributes have for themselves and for others. In this section, we discuss the
primary bases for individuals’ work environment perceptions in regard to each
psychological climate perspective, the organizing framework (factor structure)
for each perspective, and the generality/specificity of factors within each
perspective.
Social constructionist perspective
Arguably, given the numerous articles that have focused on a particular referent
such as service or safety since the 1970s, the dominant approach to the study of
psychological climate is the social constructionist perspective. Proponents of the
social constructionist perspective contend that individuals’ perceptions arise
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primarily from their interactions with each other and their organizational context
and, therefore, the “construction” of their beliefs about the current work
environment occurs almost exclusively in that work environment (Ashforth,
1985; Ashkanasy, Wilderom, & Peterson, 2000; Kozlowski & Doherty, 1989;
Schneider & Reichers, 1983). Essentially, employees’ perceptions are viewed as
individual descriptions of their work environment (i.e., social setting or context).
These descriptions are the basis for individuals making sense of their work
environment , and do not necessarily involve any emotional evaluation of the
situation.
Climate research within the social constructionist perspective is largely based
on choosing a referent or focus of interest and then measuring employee
perceptions of work environment characteristics (e.g., rewards, routines)
associated with this focus. For instance, researchers and practitioners have
measured employee perceptions of the work environment with respect to
bullying (Vartia, 1996), diversity (Kossek & Zonia, 1993), creativity and
innovation (Ekvall, 1996), lesbianism (Driscoll, Kelley, & Fassinger, 1996),
customer service (Schneider, 1990), organizational trust (McKnight & Webster,
2001), safety (Flin, Mearns, O’Connor, & Bryden, 2000), sexual harassment
(Culbertson & Rodgers, 1997), team climate (Anderson & West, 1996; Ekelund,
Jorstad, & Maznevski, 2000), transfer of learning (Rouiller & Goldstein, 1993),
and so on. Schneider and Reichers (1983) and Rousseau (1988) refer to these
types of climate as “climates for something” and “facet-specific climates”,
respectively.
Researchers adopting a social constructionist perspective not only focus on a
particular referent such as safety or service in developing their questionnaires,
but also generally tailor their instrumentation to the organization or industry
under study. For instance, within the domain of safety climate, although some
commonalities in the dimensions studied are evident (see Flin et al., 2000), there
is wide variation in how the construct is operationalized (Coyle, Sleeman, &
Adams, 1995; Dedobbeleer & Beland, 1998; Flin et al., 2000). To our
knowledge, this point holds even within an industry or sector such as energy (Flin
et al., 2000; Smith-Crowe, Burke, & Landis, 2001) or retail service (Burke et al.,
1992; Johnson, 1996; Schmit & Allscheid, 1995; Wiley, 1991). Thus,
epistemologically , the social constructionist approach tends to be more inductive
than other psychological climate perspectives, as the dimensions and items are
often more situational and content-specific.
Given how climate has been measured, social constructionist researchers do
not necessarily view psychological climate as being comprised of a universal
(generalizable) set of dimensions or factors. Therefore, examinations of the
dimensionality of psychological climate primarily involve the use of exploratory
factor analysis or exploratory content analysis methodologies. The goal of these
analyses is to uncover the categories or dimensions along which individuals
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perceive characteristics of their work environments. Therefore, within the social
constructionist perspective, the resulting organizing frameworks for individual
work environment perceptions are almost exclusively first-order factor models.
General psychological climate perspective
In contrast to the social constructionist perspective, the general psychological
climate perspective explicitly emphasizes the importance of personal values
(e.g., clarity, responsibility, support, and friendly social relations) in the
appraisal of work environment attributes.1 Personal values suggest what is
important to the individual and are posited to produce the schemas employed to
appraise the work environment in terms of its significance to the individual.
Moreover, James and James (1989) hypothesize that employee perceptions of the
work environment reflect a higher-order factor (General Psychological Climate,
PCg ) comprising an emotional evaluation of the degree to which the work
environment is perceived to be personally beneficial or detrimental. James and
his colleagues not only advocate a single general factor for explaining work
environment perceptions, but also believe that there are a somewhat limited
number of generalizable first-order climate dimensions (i.e., leader facilitation
and support, role stress and lack of harmony, work group co-operation, and job
challenge). Epistemologically, this deductive approach to the conceptualization
of psychological climate is consistent with the work of several other researchers
who propose similar sets of core, generalizable psychological climate
dimensions (cf., Kopelman, Brief, & Guzzo, 1990; Payne & Pugh, 1976).
The PCg perspective suggests that scientist-practitioners use climate
assessment instruments to measure core generalizable factors and that individual
work environment perceptions can be summarized in terms of a single score (e.g.,
individual scores on a composite measure of PCg ). Notably, James and James’
(1989) confirmatory factor analyses on four diverse samples supported a set of
four core first-order climate factors and a hierarchical factor structure with a
single, higher-order factor, labelled PCg. Although core, generalizable factors are
measured within this perspective, their content may reflect a particular referent
such as safety, service, or diversity. In this sense, if first-order climate factors are
focused on a particular referent, then the higher-order factor PCg may in fact
explain employees’ perceptions of a “climate for something.”
1Although the social constructionist perspective does not explicitly recognize the role of
personal values with respect to schemas or factors for organizing employee perceptions of work
environment characteristics, theoretical arguments pertaining to the attraction, recruitment, and
retention of individuals to organizations with similar individual characteristics suggest that these
individuals may possess similar personal values (see McCormick, DeNisi, & Shaw, 1979, for a
discussion of the gravitational hypothesis; Schneider, 1987, for a discussion of the AttractionSelection-Attrition framework).
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Multiple stakeholder perspective
Extending James and James’ (1989) work, Burke et al. (1992) argued that, in
addition to personal values, values espoused by the organization towards key
stakeholder groups are likely to engender additional schemas for making sense of
one’s work environment. That is, Burke et al. proposed that first-order
psychological climate factors reflect not only personal value-based schemas
(which are shaped by past history and possibly other individual difference
variables) but also organizationally espoused values and management practices
towards other stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, contractors, and the
general public. Consistent with Mandler (1982) and Piaget’s (1970) notion of the
schema as structuring experience and being structured by it, Burke et al. posited
that some first-order climate factors (i.e., value-based schemas) may change
(accommodate) or be modified (via assimilation of information into evolving
structures). Accommodation or assimilation may result, in part, from an
individual’s desire to achieve an adaptive fit with the organization’s espoused
values toward another stakeholder group, which may differ from the individual’s
personal values.2 For example, a public energy company’s espoused values such
as “Focus on our customers” and “Create and sustain a safe work environment”
coupled with practices designed to reinforce these values may engender the
development or modification of a schema (e.g., a first-order factor such as
organizational public safety orientation) relative to another stakeholder group (in
this case, the general public). Empirical support for the hypothesized influence of
organizational values on employees’ perceptions of characteristics of their work
environments in a variety of industries was recently presented in Vandenberghe
and Peiro (1999).
In terms of the framework for organizing individual work environment
perceptions , the multiple stakeholder perspective suggests that higher-order
schemas may underlie individual perceptions of the degree to which the work
environment is beneficial to the organization’s multiple stakeholders (e.g.,
employees, customers, suppliers). More specifically, researchers adopting this
perspective (cf., Borucki & Burke, 1999; Burke et al., 1992; Vaslow, 1999) argue
that individuals cognitively appraise their work environment with respect to the
impact of work environment characteristics on personal well-being as well as
with respect to the well-being of each of the other relevant stakeholder groups.
Implicit in this discussion is the notion that assessments of personal well-being
are made by employees as a stakeholder group. However, the multiple
stakeholder perspective does not preclude assessments of personal well-being
from one or more of the organization’s other stakeholder groups.
2Although accommodation and assimilation are key aspects of the social constructionist
perspective, this later perspective does not explicitly consider the central role of organizationall y
espoused values towards stakeholder groups other than employees as the underlying bases for
hierarchically ordered climate perceptions.
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Consistent with the PCg perspective, the multiple stakeholder perspective
calls for the use of core, generalizable dimensions for assessing individuals’
cognitive appraisals of personal well-being. Whereas the social constructionist
perspective leads to the utilization of climate dimensions associated with a
referent such as safety, the multiple stakeholder perspective places greater
emphasis on the use of stakeholder-specific dimensions, which permit
individuals’ cognitive appraisals of the well-being of the other relevant
stakeholder group(s). Notably, the content of both types of climate dimensions
within the multiple stakeholder perspective can be linked to a referent such as
safety or service. Furthermore, the multiple stakeholder perspective may
engender the conceptualization and empirical confirmation of generalizable
stakeholder-specific dimensions for non-employees (e.g., customers, the public).
That is, future research efforts directed toward the study of generalizable
psychological climate dimensions that would apply to a non-employee
stakeholder group such as suppliers would be informative. In a subsequent
section, we posit a general taxonomy of “other” stakeholder dimensions to guide
research on the meaning and factor structure of psychological climate.
In addition to core, generalizable dimensions, the multiple stakeholder
perspective incorporates higher-order factors relative to each stakeholder group.
For example, within a retail service context, Burke et al. (1992) proposed that
employee work environment perceptions within a retail service environment, at
the higher-order factor level, reflect employees’ cognitive appraisals of the
behavior of agents towards: (1) employees’ well-being in the organization’s
internal environment, and (2) the well-being of customers in the task
environment. The internal environment is composed primarily of current
employees and production technology, whereas the task environment comprises
sectors that conduct day-to-day transactions with the organization and thus
influence its basic operations (Bourgeois, 1980). Confirmatory factor analytic
results (with data collected from 18,457 sales personnel in 567 stores of a
national US retail chain) provided support for viewing employee work climate
perceptions as comprising two higher-order factors, labelled concern for
employees and concern for customers. Furthermore, the first-order factors
comprising concern for employees were highly consistent with the core firstorder factors of James and James’ (1989) higher-order PCg model, and the firstorder factors comprising concern for customers were focused more on aspects of
customer service in a retail store setting. Related to the previous discussion, the
first-order factors comprising concern for employees and concern for customers
were found to be invariant across regions in which the company operated.
As another example, Vaslow (1999) compared psychological climate models
based on the three perspectives in a secondary US public school district with data
collected from 357 teachers. His study was designed to specifically address the
question of whether teachers cognitively appraise the extent to which
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characteristics of the school environment impact not only the well-being of
teachers (i.e., the PCg model) but also the well-being of teachers and students
(i.e., the multiple stakeholder model in an educational setting). The multiple
stakeholder model of work climate included two higher-order factors, concern
for teachers and concern for students, conceptually defined respectively as the
extent to which teachers perceive organizational agents to be acting towards the
well-being of the teachers and the extent to which teachers perceive
organizational agents to be acting towards the well-being of students.
Confirmatory factor analytic results demonstrated that the multiple stakeholder
model of psychological climate generalizes to an educational setting.
Furthermore , empirical support for the conceptual distinction between the
higher-order factors concern for teachers and concern for students provides
compelling evidence that James and James’ (1989) higher-order PCg factor
(which is consistent with the higher-order factor concern for teachers) is not
merely due to common methods variance (see Parker, 1999). That is, if common
methods variance was a threat to the construct validity of these higher-order
factors, Vaslow (1999) would not have confirmed two independent higher-order
factors.
A general taxonomy for psychological climate
The general implication of the multiple stakeholder perspective is that in order to
more completely assess the nature of employees’ work climate perceptions,
researchers should consider all relevant stakeholder (or constituent) groups.
Most climate surveys only focus on measuring employee perceptions of how the
work environment impacts them personally (cf., James & James, 1989). In
contrast, the multiple stakeholder perspective suggests that climate surveys may
be enhanced by including dimensions and items that ask individuals to rate how
work environment attributes impact the well-being of each of the important
stakeholder groups. Furthermore, a situational referent such as safety, service, or
diversity could be employed to focus the development of survey items for both
core (employee) and other stakeholder-specific dimensions.
A non-exhaustive list of the core, first-order dimensions, which we believe
would comprise the higher-order factor concern for employees in almost all work
environments would be goal emphasis, means emphasis, management support,
reward orientation, work group cooperation, and autonomy and decision making.
Dimensions similar to these have been discussed in the literature (Kopelman et
al., 1990) and confirmed as invariant across organizational units, organizations,
and industries (see Burke et al., 1992; James & James, 1989; Vaslow, 1999).
Furthermore , as demonstrated within several confirmatory factor analytic
studies, these dimensions relating to the employee stakeholder group can be
measured with respect to a particular referent (e.g., a climate for service, a
climate for learning).
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Theoretical rationales presented in Burke et al. (1992) and Vaslow
(1999) suggest that a non-exhaustive list of the core, first-order dimensions
comprising a higher-order factor related to a second stakeholder group (e.g.,
customers, suppliers, contractors, the public, etc.) would include first-order
factors concerning the organization’s policies and procedures pertaining to
the other stakeholder group, human-resource related obstacles to fulfilling the
other stakeholder’s requirements and expectations, and physical resourcerelated obstacles to fulfilling the other stakeholder’s requirements and
expectations. These dimensions could also be measured with respect to a
particular referent. Furthermore, for practical purposes, the item content could be
targeted to either the departmental (sub-unit), organization, industry, or sector
level.
For example, if the referent were safety within the nuclear hazardous waste
industry and the second stakeholder group was the public, the higher-order
factor would be employees’ perceptions of concern for the public. Concern for
the public would be conceptually defined as employees’ cognitive appraisals of
the behaviour of organizational agents toward the well-being of the public. A
core, first-order factor, organizational public safety orientation, would be
relevant and would assess employees’ perceptions of the company’s policies and
procedures related to the safe handling, storage, and disposal of nuclear
hazardous wastes. A second core factor, human resource related obstacles to
public safety, would concern the extent to which employees perceive problems or
barriers to providing outstanding safety due to human resource practices (e.g.,
inadequately trained materials handlers, inadequate staffing to handle emergency
conditions affecting the public). A third core factor, physical resource related
obstacles to public safety, would concern the extent to which employees perceive
problems or barriers to providing outstanding safety due to the quality of
facilities and technologies (e.g., failure to maintain protective barriers in
underground storage tanks, lack of appropriate equipment for monitoring
hazardous substances).
Although not discussed in detail here, the higher-order factor concern for
employees in the hazardous waste industry would be comprised of first-order
factors focusing on safety issues in relation to the dimensions noted earlier. For
example, means emphasis might include items relating to employee perceptions
of the appropriateness of health and safety training and the provision of necessary
reference information such as an MSDS (materials safety data sheet). In sum, the
multiple stakeholder perspective and the previous general taxonomy of climate
factors provide a framework for researchers and practitioners to conceptualize
and specify potentially generalizable models of psychological climate with
respect to different referents, organizational levels, industries or sectors, and
stakeholder groups.
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AGGREGATING INDIVIDUAL LEVEL DATA:
ISSUES, SUGGESTED METHODS, AND FUTURE
RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
In this section, we discuss conceptual issues related to employing psychological
climate perceptions as indicators of organizational climate, offer methodological
suggestions for aggregating psychological climate perceptions, and discuss
future research directions concerning the aggregation of individual level data.
Using individual work environment perceptions as
indicators of higher-level constructs
Research with respect to the previously discussed perspectives has considered
psychological climate as somewhat distinct from notions of group or
organizational climate. More specifically, psychological climate is regarded as a
characteristic of the individual with survey item responses as indicators, whereas
organizational climate is considered to be a property of a group, unit, or
organization (i.e., the respective practices, procedures, and routines) with
aggregated individual perceptions serving as potential indicators. That is,
organizational climate is considered within the literature as a collective,
summary description of the work environment (cf., Rousseau, 1988).
A number of authors have presented composition arguments or theoretical
rationales for expecting individual work environment perceptions to be similar
within specific work environments (Borucki & Burke, 1999; Burke, Rupinski,
Dunlap, & Davison, 1996; George, 1990; Kozlowski & Hattrup, 1992). For
example, Schneider and Bowen (1985) have presented an argument for
aggregating employee work environment perceptions to the bank branch level.
More specifically, they asserted that each bank branch must be organized and
managed to ensure quality service delivery by whoever is available to any client
who enters the branch and needs assistance. Thus, it follows that employees
within any given bank branch may have similar perceptions of what happens to
and for customers.
Along with a composition argument for justifying the aggregation of
individual level data, similarity of individual work environment perceptions has
also been extensively discussed as a necessary condition for data aggregation
(cf., Chan, 1998). That is, a demonstration of within-group interrater agreement
is essential in order to employ measures of central tendency as indicators of
group level or organization level constructs. Several procedures have been
proposed for assessing within-group interrater agreement when individuals only
rate a single target such as a group, business unit, or organization with respect to
multiple items. These procedures include rWG type indices (James, Demaree, &
Wolf, 1984; Lindell, Brandt, & Whitney, 1999) and average deviation (AD)
indices (Burke, Finkelstein, & Dusig, 1999). Both AD indices and rWG indices
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indicate the degree of interchangeability of raters (i.e., the extent to which
individuals rate the target similarly).
When applying within-group interrater agreement indices, researchers often
employ a cut-off value for acceptable levels of interrater agreement. If the
interrater agreement value for individual responses on a measure in the group
does not meet the minimum interrater agreement cut-off score, the construct is
said to not “exist” at that level of analysis (i.e., is not meaningful). Obviously,
inflexible adherence to minimum interrater agreement cut-offs for determining
whether or not to aggregate individual responses would be considered strict
operationism , where the group or organizational level construct is only defined
with respect to a specified measure and interrater agreement index. However, in
practice, researchers tend to conduct statistical analyses both with and without
groups and organizations that have met pre-established interrater agreement cutoffs (e.g., see Borucki & Burke, 1999).
More recently, Lindell and Brandt (2000) and Schneider, Salvaggio, and
Subirats (2002) have examined climate consensus or climate strength (i.e.,
variance in climate ratings) as mediators or moderators in organization-level
analyses. These authors suggest that such variation in climate ratings within an
organization may be theoretically important. Furthermore, Schneider et al.
(2002) proposed the use of the standard deviation as an index of climate strength,
with smaller standard deviations being indicative of greater strength. However,
we believe that researchers can more easily interpret and study climate strength in
terms of the magnitude of the AD index of interrater agreement (Burke &
Dunlap, 2002). The AD index, which measures the absolute value of dispersion
of responses about the mean (or median) response, provides a more direct
conceptualization and measurement of climate strength in the metric or units of
the original measurement scale. Although the AD index is used as a measure of
agreement, the quantity AD is actually a measure of disagreement. As such, if
AD were equal to zero (no disagreement), one would conclude that there is a very
strong climate (or perfect agreement among the raters about the organization’s
climate on an item or scale). Importantly, researchers can readily compare
climate strength along multiple dimensions with a standard index such as AD, as
opposed to comparing climate strength along such dimensions with standard
deviations (particularly if the dimensions or scales have different numbers of
items).
Suggested methods and future research directions for
aggregating psychological climate perceptions
There are several issues to consider when aggregating individual level responses
and using aggregated values (means or medians) in analyses at any level above
the individual level of analysis. First, researchers should consider computing
interrater agreement with respect to both AD and rWG type indices when
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assessing interrater agreement with respect to ratings of a single target. The use
of more than one interrater agreement index allows for checks on the results and
suggests where researchers can conduct useful follow-up analyses to examine
why, if any, discrepancies are occurring. Conducting follow-up checks is
particularly informative in situations where researchers are considering the
elimination of data points (e.g., units or groups with respect to data aggregation)
that have not met a minimally acceptable level of interrater agreement on a
particular interrater agreement index. If alternative indices support interrater
agreement, the researcher can be more confident in conclusions about the degree
of interrater agreement that is present. More informed decisions can then be made
about whether or not to aggregate individual level data or discard cases at the
group or organization level, both of which impact statistical power.
We should note that psychometric rationales for establishing interrater
agreement cut-offs have only begun to appear in the literature under the
assumption that a rectangular distribution (i.e., the distribution in which each
response category is equally likely) is a reasonable approximation to judges
responding randomly to an item or set of items in a measure (see Burke &
Dunlap, 2002). Clearly, more research is needed on how this important
assumption affects the establishment of practical cut-offs for interrater
agreement with both rWG and AD type indices. Furthermore, this line of research
could be extended beyond Likert-type rating scales, to the establishment of
interrater agreement cutoffs (or interpretive standards) for the case of a response
scale that involves percentages or proportions, rather than discrete categories, or
at the other extreme, to dichotomous items and scales (i.e., for yes–no, agree–
disagree, true–false scales).
Second, where data from multiple sources is available, researchers should
consider aggregated employee and non-employee (e.g., customers) perceptions
as alternative indicators of organizational level constructs and not necessarily
treat the aggregated scores on the respective sources (e.g., employee and
customer measures) as measures of independent constructs. With only a few
exceptions (cf., Borucki & Burke, 1999), researchers have considered aggregated
responses from alternate sources as indicators of distinct higher-level
organizational constructs. Given that organizational variables (as indicated by
aggregated perceptual variables) are not necessarily isomorphic with individual
perceptions or variables (Borucki & Burke, 1999), this recommendation is
intended to caution researchers against making inappropriate inferences about
relations between organizational level constructs based on aggregated individual
level data from different sources.
An important research issue that has only begun to be addressed is whether
the observed agreement for a group is sufficiently different from chance
agreement (i.e., whether or not we can conclude that some agreement exists
regardless of its magnitude). Ensuring that the interrater agreement results for
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any given interrater agreement index meet this criterion may be helpful for
making decisions about data aggregation and is necessary for hypothesis-testing
purposes (i.e., ensuring that agreement is significantly different from chance
responding given the size of the group). Recently, researchers have discussed
how the bootstrapping method (Cohen, Doveh, & Eick, 2001) or chi-square test
(Lindell & Brandt, 1999) can be employed to test the statistical significance of
rWG type indexes. Unfortunately, the chi-square test, which is widely available, is
very inaccurate for statistical tests of rWG interrater agreement indices (Dunlap,
Burke, & Smith-Crowe, in press). Therefore, Burke and Dunlap (2002) proposed
the use of an approximate randomization test for testing the statistical
significance of AD interrater agreement results, and extended the use of
approximate randomization tests for use with rWG (Dunlap et al., in press).3
Issues concerning the use of statistical significance tests for studying interrater
agreement with respect to multiple item scales remain to be addressed.
A related issue pertains to the present use of aggregated individual level data
in tests of hypothesized causal models of organizational functioning. For
instance, researchers (e.g., Neal, Griffin, & Hart, 2000; Schneider, White, &
Paul, 1998) are beginning to test models linking several higher level climate
constructs within the same organization to one another, where the climate
constructs were based on aggregated individual level data. Importantly, although
researchers are beginning to causally order climate constructs in tests of path
models of organizational functioning, conceptual rationales are lacking for why
and/or how characteristics of one organizational environment (e.g., internal
environment or sub-climate) would causally affect the characteristics of the other
organizational environment (e.g., task environment or sub-climate). More
detailed conceptual rationales are needed in order for researchers to justify the
causal ordering of characteristics of work environments that are generally
conceptualized within the management and organization literatures as correlated
or overlapping.
In addition to studying organizational climate based on composition
arguments and aggregated individual work environment perceptions, a separate
stream of research has employed an exploratory approach to identifying
organizational climates or subclimates. That is, some researches advocate the use
of cluster analysis to identify clusters or “collectives” of individuals and then
consider aggregating individual climate scores with respect to the clusters (cf.,
Jackofsky & Slocum, 1988; Joyce & Slocum, 1984). The empirical evidence
regarding the meaning and utility of the concept of collective climates is mixed
(Gonzalez-Roma , Peiro, Lloret, & Zornoza, 1999; Patterson, Payne, & West,
1996; Payne, 1990; Young & Parker, 1999). Given that collectives are only
3A downloadable program (i.e., AGREE) for computing item-level AD and r
WG values and for
conducting tests of statistical significance with both AD and rWG indices is available on the web
(www.tulane.edu/~dunlap/psylib.html).
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identified via exploratory statistical analyses, we concur with Payne and his
colleagues that individuals engaged in this line of research should demonstrate
the socio-psychological meaning of the collectives and discuss their utility for
enhancing our understanding of organizational processes. As an example, Young
and Parker studied collective climates in relation to employee interaction groups
and found that collective climates were related to these interaction groups. Their
study also provided some evidence that individuals with similar levels of need
strength share collective climate membership.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
At the individual level of analysis, we addressed the question of how individual
work environment perceptions might be conceptualized and measured from three
psychological climate perspectives: (1) social constructionist, (2) general
psychological , and (3) multiple stakeholder. Although we highlighted
differences between these perspectives regarding hypothesized bases of work
environment perceptions, organizing frameworks or models for capturing these
perceptions , and the generality/specificity of psychological climate factors
within these frameworks, we argued that these perspectives are complementary
in nature. Aspects of each perspective can be meaningfully employed to enhance
our understanding of individual perceptions of work environment characteristics.
Moreover, this commentary has presented a general framework for
conceptualizing and measuring climate perceptions with respect to different
referents, organizational levels, industries or sectors, and stakeholder groups.
In regard to organizational level analyses, we discussed the importance of
composition arguments or theory to justify data aggregation and the usefulness of
aggregated climate perceptions as indicators of group or organizational level
constructs. In addition, we suggested applicable within-group interrater
agreement procedures for assessing similarity of individual responses when only
a single target (e.g., group, organization) is rated and future research directions
concerning data aggregation. Furthermore, we cautioned against measuring
organizational climate in a strict operational sense and against viewing
aggregated individual perceptions from different sources as necessarily being
measures of independent organizational level constructs (i.e., isomorphism).
Finally, we advocated the development of conceptual rationales as justification
for the causal ordering of characteristics of work environments in tests of models
of group or organizational functioning.
In conclusion, this commentary offers insights into issues related to defining
and measuring work environment perceptions and provides guidance for
employing aggregated perceptions as indicators of organizational climate.
Although the extant psychological climate literature may appear to embody three
competing perspectives, this commentary discusses how the social constructionist , general psychological, and multiple stakeholder climate
338
BURKE, BORUCKI, KAUFMAN
perspectives are more complementary, with the multiple stakeholder perspective
providing a unifying framework.
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Manuscript received March 2001
Revised manuscript received June 2002