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Climates in organizations

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'Academy ol Management Review, 1988, Vol. 13, No. 1, 129-132.
Comment:
Organizations Do Not Cognize
LAWRENCE R. JAMES
Georgia Institute of Technology
WILLIAM F. JOYCE
Dartmouth College
JOHN W. SLOCUM, JR.
Southern Methodist University
Psychological climate (PC) is defined as a set
of perceptions that reflect how work environ-
ments, including organizational attributes, are
cognitively appraised and represented in terms
of their meaning to and significance for individu-
als (cf. James & Jones, 1974; James & Sells, 1981;
Joyce & Slocum, 1979). Factorial invariance stud-
ies indicate that PC has a parsimonious set of
dimensions (Jones & James, 1979). These dimen-
sions are (a) conflict and ambiguity; (b) job
challenge, importance, and variety; (c) leader
facilitation and support; (d) workgroup coopera-
tion, friendliness, and warmth; and (e) profes-
sional and organizational esprit. If individuals in
an organization share perceptions on a PC di-
mension such as conflict and ambiguity, then it
is possible to aggregate the PC scores because
perceptual agreement implies a shared assign-
ment of meaning (James, 1982). The aggregate
scores are regarded as indicators of organiza-
tional climate (OC) because they indicate how
individuals in general perceive their organiza-
tion.
Glick (1985) rejected this conceptualization of
OC. He suggested that OC is a "result of socio-
logical/organizational processes" (p. 605) and
should be conceptualized "as an organizational
phenomenon [and] not as a simple aggregation
of psychological climate" (p. 603). Glick (1985)
defined OC "as a generic term for a broad class
of organizational, rather than psychological, vari-
ables that describe the organizational context for
129
individuals' actions" (p. 613, emphasis added).
An exemplary OC variable was "high pressure
to produce" (p. 605), presumably created by com-
petitive market conditions. Glick (1985) relied on
Schneider and Reichers (1983) for a description
of the determinants of climate:
common exposure of organizational members to
the same objective structural characteristics;
selection, attraction, and attrition of organizational
members, resulting in a homogeneous set of
members; and social interactions leading to
shared meanings (p. 604, emphasis added).
Social interaction processes included organi-
zational sense making, social constructions of
reality, and intersubjective developments of
meaning. Moreover, the products of these social
interactions, or OC, were characterized not only
as shared meanings but also as collective atti-
tudes {cl. Poole & McPhee, 1983). Finally, OC
was described as an emergent, organizational
level process that cannot be entirely decomposed
into individual cognitions reflecting meaning and
individual attitudes.
The Basic Unit of Theory for OC
Glick's discussions of OC contain some incon-
sistencies. In particular, it is difficult to under-
stand how one can define OC as a nonpsycho-
logical, organizational variable that is different
from a shared assignment of psychological
meaning (i.e., aggregate PC), and then describe
OC as a "shared meaning" or a "collective
attitude" that is, in part, a function of social
constructions, sense making, and intersubjective
developments of meaning. Attributing or imput-
ing meaning to environmental attributes (e.g.,
attributing equity to pay, challenge to task
characteristics, pressure or overload to role
demands) requires processes that produce cog-
nitive appraisals (i.e., interpretations) of signifi-
cance to the individual (cf. Lazarus, 1982).
These processes take place within the individ-
ual and involve interactions between environ-
mental stimuli and personalistic attributes, such
as values cmd expectations (cf. Ekehammer, 1974;
Endler & Magnusson, 1976). Thus, attributing
meaning to environmental stimuli is a product of
cognitive information processing, and it is indi-
viduals, and not organizations, that cognize. The
basic unit of theory for meaning is the individual.
Although climate is not synonymous with atti-
tude (cf. Hellriegel & Slocum, 1974), it is, never-
theless, the case that no organization has ever
had, or ever will have, an attitude. An attitude
must be an individual-level phenomenon be-
cause attitudes are the products of psychologi-
cal processes involving beliefs, affect, and pre-
dispositions.
Cognitive appraisals may involve processes
such as social constructions (who does the con-
structing?) and sense making (who makes
sense?). However, cognitive appraisals, social
constructions, and sense making are emergent
psychological processes that may, and often do,
reflect dynamic social interaction processes.
When people converse with one another, the
subjects discussed as well as the sources of infor-
mation serve as informational cues. But address-
ing dynamic social interactions as causes of
meaning does not imply that meaning itself is
something other than a psychological variable.
This definitional problem permeated Glick's
discussions of aggregations of psychological
climate, cross-level inferences, collective cli-
mates, and methodological issues, such as how
to measure climate and how to assess the reli-
ability of a climate variable.
Aggregate Psychological Climate
As noted, perceptual agreement justifies ag-
gregation of PC scores because such agreement
implies a shared assignment of meaning. Shared
perceptions and attitudes may be developed
through social interactions (Joyce & Slocum,
1984). Included here are carry-over effects for
PC and aggregates of PC where, for example,
current organizational members influence per-
ceptions of new members. Moreover, shared
meaning may reflect a homogenizing process
resulting from self-selection, organizational
130
selection, common work experiences, and attri-
tion (Schneider & Reichers, 1983).
Shared assignment of meaning justifies aggre-
gation to a higher level of analysis (e.g., groups,
subsystems, organizations) because it furnishes
a way of relating a construct (PC) that is defined
and operationalized at one level of analysis (the
individual) to another form of the construct at a
different level of analysis (e.g., group climate,
subsystem climate, OC). Although the unit of
analysis for the aggregate psychological vari-
able is the situation (e.g., group, subsystem,
organization), the definition and basic unit of the-
ory remains psychological. A psychological term,
such as autonomy, is defined in the same man-
ner for individuals in general, given that these
individuals share perceptions of autonomy, as it
is for each individual Games, 1982). If the percep-
tions are shared, they can be described in parsi-
monious terms using statistics such as means.
The use of aggregate PC scores affords research-
ers the opportunity to describe environments in
psychological terms (James, 1982; Joyce & Slo-
cum, 1979, 1984).
Measurement Issues
Glick focused attention on the need to obtain
accurate (i.e., veridical) descriptions of organiza-
tional characteristics in order to assess OC. But
if OC is defined in terms of shared meanings,
then many of Glick's recommendations pertain-
ing to OC measurement need rethinking. For
example, measuring PC (which furnishes an as-
sessment of meaning for each individual) differ-
ently than OC (which is the shared meaning
among individuals) is inappropriate. Similarly,
Glick suggested that changing an item from "I
am encouraged to try new work methods" to
"This organization encourages employees to try
new methods" results in a transition from a
description of a psychological response to a de-
scription of a set of situational stimuli. We dis-
agree. Not only is there a part-whole relation
between these two items, but both items are also
belief statements (or macro perceptions) that re-
flect interprefaWons of stimuli (i.e., the degree to
which the organization is supportive of innova-
tion) rather than descriptions of actual events,
processes, or behaviors. Many PC items that may
be aggregated to represent OC must employ a
personal item referent. To illustrate, if salaries
are confidential, then it is impossible to ask indi-
viduals if salaries in the organization are gener-
ally equitable. Rather, each organizational in-
cumbent must be asked whether his/her salary
is equitable.
The contention that the intraclass correlation
designed to assess stability of aggregates (ICC[2])
should be employed to assess the "reliability" of
an OC variable also appears incorrect (although
this statistic could be used to assess the stability
of OC means after perceptual agreement is
demonstrated). If OC is defined in terms of
shared meaning, then we must ascertain the de-
gree to which perceptions are shared. This re-
quires an interrater reliability form of analysis to
estimate perceptual agreement (cf. James, 1982).
Glick (1985) is correct in stating that homoge-
neous sampling of organizations could restrict
the range of climate scores. However, the recom-
mendation to systematically (i.e., nonrandomly)
select a small number of the same types of "key
informants" to describe each organization ap-
pears inappropriate. This procedure does not
control bias; it hides it. Admittedly, a systematic,
common response bias, such as social desir-
ability, is a potential problem for climate re-
search, but there are accepted psychometric
methods for dealing with such issues (Nunnally,
1978). More important, if one wishes to aggre-
gate PC to represent OC, then one should dem-
onstrate that all members of the organization, or
random stratified subsamples of individuals rep-
resenting all positions in the organization, share
common perceptions. To imply organization-wide
shared meaning when only a small subsample
of nonrandomly selected key informants tended
to agree may misrepresent the data (Joyce &
Slocum, 1984).
131
Conclusion
Aggregation, disaggregation, cross-level in-
ference, ecological fallacies, and the like, are
messy. Unfortunately, methodological treatments
of these issues far outweigh substantive treat-
ments of these issues. Yet, these issues should
be treated initially as substantive and theoreti-
cal concerns. Methodological discussion and
decisions should follow, not precede, questions
such as whether it makes sense to aggregate a
psychological variable to a situational level of
analysis (key substantive questions are interpre-
tation of the aggregate and the contingencies
that make the interpretation viable). It is produc-
tive to describe organizations in psychological
terms, using aggregate PC scores on which there
are shared perceptions. The possibility that this
approach does not conform to present-day ag-
gregcrtion/cross-level inference methodology sug-
gests to us that it is time to develop new methods.
Otherwise, the study of climate will be, as Glick
believes it to be, bound theoretically by method-
ology.
References
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Lawrence R, James is Professor of Psychology at Geor-

gia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Correspondence
regarding this comment can be sent to him at; School
of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology,
Atlanta, GA 30332,
William F, Joyce is Professor of Strategy and Organi-
zation Theory at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH,
John W, Slocum, Jr,, is Professor of Organizational
Behavior, Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist
University, Dallas, TX,
The authors thank Jeanne L, Dugas, Sigrid B, Gustaf-
son, Lois A, James, and Benjamin Sciineider for their
helpful suggestions and advice.

132
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