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 2James and colleagues (James et al., 1978 James, L. R., Hater, J. J., Gent, M. J. and Bruni, J. R. 1978. Psychological Climate: Implications fromCognitive Social Learning Theory and Interactional Psychology. Personnel Psychology, 31: 783–813. Crossref], Web of Science ®] , Google Scholar]; Jones and James, 1979 Jones, A. P. and James, L. R. 1979. Psychological Climate: Dimensions and Relationships of Individual andAggregated Work Environment Perceptions. Organization Behavior and Human Performance, 23: 201–50. Crossref], Web of Science ®] , Google Scholar]) 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.  = .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.