Organizational Climate on Employees’ Work Passion: A Review

[a]Faculty of Entrepreneurship and Business, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, Kota Bharu, Malaysia.

*Corresponding author.

Received 16 March 2013; accepted 28 July 2013

Abstract

This paper presented in-depth review of recent literature focused on organizational climate and employee’s work passion and organizational commitment within academician of public and private Universities in Malaysia. An argument is put forward that there is a causal link between good organizational climate and the employees work passion and commitment in an organization. A conceptual model of organizational climate and employee’s work passion and organizational commitment is presented that provides an explanation of the linkage between these variables. This paper addressed the employee’s needs and expectation from the employer in the aspect of organizational climate and commitment. Thus, by exploring the recent literature, this paper provides a critical review about the role of organizational climate, and therefore, enhances further knowledge and understanding of employee’s work passion as well as organizational commitment.

Key words: Organizational climate; Work passion; Organizational commitment; Academician

P. Yukthamarani Permarupan, Abdullah Al- Mamun, Roselina Ahmad Saufi, Noor Raihani Binti Zainol (2013). Organizational Climate on Employees’ Work Passion: a Review. Canadian Social Science, 9(4), -0. Available from: /index.php/css/article/view/j.css.1923669720130904.2612

DOI: /10.3968/j.css.1923669720130904.2612.

INTRODUCTION

For instance, it is found that approximately 70% to 80% of re-engineering and Total Quality Management initiatives have failed in the past 10 years due to an obsessive focus on ‘system process’ while neglecting and undervaluing ‘people process’. Re-engineering, no matter how strategic it may be to a company, fails when people are not sufficiently prepared for the change due to the lack of emphasis placed on the very life-blood of the company - people.

(Y B Datuk, Dr Fong Chan Onn, Former Minister of Human Resources, Malaysia in his speech during the National HR Summit, 2002).

The statement above is strongly focusing on human capital, which is an integral part of a management process. In today’s globalized business environment, there is no way out but for any organization to face various malice and competitions. This scenario has been an impetus for many organizational researchers to study specific employee intention in joining an organization (Ali, 1996). In today’s business world, “business” dealing caters to various sectors and industries however the end result involves human beings at various roles and dimensions. Be it as an employer, employee, or customer as the end-user.

The workforces today are filled with various mindsets. Over the past few years, there have been numerous supports on human capital development, lifelong learning and continuous attention on soft skill development. Nevertheless, many a times, issues are only attended at the surface level but not to the roots of the cause. Human beings are highly associated with emotion and intelligence. Therefore, the requirement to fulfill human need hierarchy is rather an important aspect especially on satisfaction and motivation.

At this moment of time, the focus area will be the working environments attitude and values. A nation with the right employee mindset provides an integrated relationship to the economic growth of the said nation. This gives the opportunity to understand the precisely organizational climate’s impact on employees work passion and organizational commitment. This is vital to create a balance strike between both parties as in the employer and employee.

No matter how much technology has made our lifestyle more comfortable, the function of an organization is heavily supported by human capital involvement. Organizational climate here will be the support rendered by the employer for the comfort of employees, Work Passion is the underlying element that measures the employee behavior and Organizational Commitment will evaluate the value system of the employee indirectly. The success and growth of an organization requires a good set of human capital. In order to have the best human capital with the organization and retaining the current performing human capital, organization today are out doing each other to provide the most excellent remuneration with tremendous career growth.

1. LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Organizational Climate

“Organizational climate is a shared perception of what the organization is like in terms of practices, policies, procedures, routines, and rewards- what is important and what behaviors are expected and rewarded- and is based on shared perceptions among employees within formal organizational units (Bowen & Ostroff, 2004) .”

Organizational climate represents the condition of the organization’s culture. The most common management issue faced by organization in this present day is search for creative flexible work environment that promotes job satisfaction and innovation. Being drained by fiscal constraint, downsizing, and outsourcing requires organization to change dynamics in the workforce that is accommodating.

Rekha Nair (2006) in his study noted the increasing importance of workplace climate on employee job satisfaction, creativity, motivation and retention. Because of the importance of workplace climate, IBM made adjustments and set best practices which in turn have helped the organization to stay on top. In between organizational climate and company performance, employee plays an important role because employee’s job satisfaction is highlighted as the mediator between organizational climate and company performance (Patterson et al., 2004). Literature on organizational climate and its impact on firm’s overall performance is many (James & Jones, 1974), but the recent studies of Ostroff and Bowen (2000) proposed that organizational climate is a bridge that links HRM and performance. Organizational climate have been proven to influence employee’s behavior such as participation, absenteeism level of stress and work commitment (Rose, 2002, 2004).

Limelight on the development of employee performance needs to be at the top of every organization’s agenda. Promoting a supportive environment and a positive workforce climate is no longer seen as a simply an attractive option; it is a business vital. Climate has a tangible effect on employees’ motivation. A good working climate boosts employee morale, loyalty and productivity. There are 6 different dimensions of climate (established by Hay Group)

Dimension Item

Clarity Knowing what is expected from you;

Understanding how those expectations relate to the goals of the organization.

Standards Emphasis that management puts on improving performance;

Degree to which challenging but attainable goals are set;

Extent to which mediocrity is not tolerated.

Responsibility Feeling that you have authority delegated to you;

Feeling that you can do your job without being micromanaged;

Accountability.

Flexibility Degree to which you feel there are no unnecessary rules or procedures;

Feeling that new ideas are easy to get accepted.

Rewards Being recognized for good work;

Degree to which recognition is directly related to levels of performance.

Team Commitment Feeling proud and expressing pride in belonging to the organization;

Trusting that everyone works towards a common objective;

Working positively together and cooperating across organizational structures.

Source: Rekha Nair (2006).

Organizational climate is deemed to be important: it is perceived, as motivated employee will result in higher productivity, greater passion for the business, and a deeper engagement with customers. A positive climate encourages employees’ productivity and decrease turnover.

In one of the research by Taymaz (2003), it was concluded that organization climate is a key factor that increases the effectiveness and efficiency of school, and many researchers studying schools found effective schools have positive organizational climate. But one has to understand that organizational climate is not something that happens in a blink of a time, it is a product of long process in which a organization operate (Guney, 2000). Based on the same schooling background, open communication and sincere relationship create positive organizational climate, which means mutual sincerity, trust and respect (Ozden, 2004).

The task of creating and maintaining a organizational climate lies in the management leader, whose managerial behavior impacts the organizational climate (Tuna, 1996). The performance and satisfaction degree of the organization members are highly influenced by the leadership style and a change in the leadership style impacts the climate significantly (Aydin, 1993), and this is acknowledged by top managers who agree that people make difference (Verburg & Den Hartog, 2006).

1.2 Work Passion

Work passion is an individual’s persistent, positivity, scientific state of well-being stemming from reoccurring cognitive and affective appraisals of various job and organizational situations, which results in steady, beneficial work intentions and behaviors. Therefore, it’s recommended that organizations should provide wisdom of meaning beyond simply making a profit. Organizations should provide the independence and flexibility for individuals for growth, opportunities collaboration, and recognition; and a sense of connectedness. Also, all organizations must ensure that processes and procedures are fairly and consistently applied to all employees.

Employee’s work passion commonly measures both cognition and affect as opposed to measuring satisfaction. Studies tend to measure employee satisfaction as “engaged,” “disengaged,” and “actively disengaged,” but fail to measure “actively engaged.” Measuring employee satisfaction on its own does not provide a measure of what the employee intends to do. Since Employee work passion measures not only affect and cognition but also intention, it provides a clearer sense of how the individual intends to behave on behalf of the organization.

According to Blanchard (2009) after numerous reviews and research, work passion could be categorized into eight elements. The variables listed were meaningful work, collaboration, fairness, autonomy, recognition, growth, connectedness with leader and connectedness with colleagues. It is believed that, if the listed variables are paid attention by the employer than the employees will probably have a high work passion towards they’re given task or job. Below are the dimensions by Blanchard (2009).

Dimension Perceived meaning

Meaningful work Employees perceive the organization’s larger purpose through products or services produced, consider their work to be worthwhile, and are proud of their individual actions and contributions that help the organization serve its customer.

Collaboration Employees perceive an organizational environment and culture that enhances collaboration, cooperation, and encouragement between all organizational members.

Fairness Employees perceive an environment where pay, benefits, resources and workload are fair and balanced and equitable, people treat each other with respect, and leaders act in an ethical manner.

Autonomy Employees perceive an environment where people have the tools, training, support, and authority to make decisions.

Recognition Employees perceive an environment where they are praised, recognized, and appreciated by colleagues and their leader for their accomplishments, where?they receive monetary compensation for those accomplishments, and where they are contributing to positive relationships with others.

Growth Employees perceive an environment where people have opportunities to learn, grow professionally, and develop skills that lead to advancement and career growth.

Connectedness with leader Employees perceive an environment where they trust their leader and where the leader makes an effort to form an interpersonal connection with them.

Connectedness with colleagues Employees perceive an environment where they trust their colleagues and where their colleagues make an effort to form an interpersonal connection with them.

These eight factors are not all inclusive but they do represent the majority that influences employee passion. It is important for the eight factors to be present to maximize employee passion as they are interdependent, meaningful work was the most evident factor present in the minds of most employees and career growth scored the lowest even though there is no statistically significant ranking among them.

2. ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT

Organizational commitment (OC) occurs when an employee is involved or identifies one with the organization. Most times, OC has been seen as an interesting subject due to its ability to help organization to predict job performance, turnover and absenteeism of employees more than job performances or job satisfaction (Malloy, 1996).

The bond or linking that employee has with his/her organization is called organizational commitment (Lambert & Paoline, 2008; Mathieu et al., 1990). OC is multidimensional and it is an outcome of one’s evaluation of his/her work place (Normala, 2010). Most researches show positive relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction (Garland et al., 2009; Lambert & Hogan, 2009; Markovits et al., 2007) and organizational commitment acts as a variable and provides useful information regarding planning, organizing, increasing, performance and reducing absences for managers. Employees who are committed to an organization will see themselves a part of the organization and remain loyal to it (Asgari et al., 2011).

Most research focuses mainly on antecedents and consequences. Allen and Meyer (1990) have indentified three types of OC which are: affective, continuance, and normative. Most public organizational studies indicates the existence of affective and continuance commitment (Kalbers and Fogarty, 1995; Ketchand and Strawser, 2001). But however, only affective commitment have shown consistent relationship with desirable organizational outcomes and negative correlation with turnover intentions among those three types of OC (Cooper-Hakim & Viswesvaran, 2005).

Most of the research on antecedent of OC were oriented to job characteristic and work experience on various variables like work design, job challenge, autonomy, skills and feedback on task (Bamber and Iyer 2002; Dunham, Grudge, & Castaneda,1994), and decision making participation and support from management (Zaffane,1994).

Apart from that, Organizational tenure is always positively associated with organizational commitment, this is because of the general assumption that the longer time they are with a company the more benefits they get (Pare, Temblay & Lalonde, 2001). It is very important to have committed employees for the existences both for private and public sectors; it is a both basic activity and final aim for organization to survive. This is because; individuals who are organizationally committed are more adaptable, more productive, work in sense of responsibility and lead to less cost in organization (Demir, 2012) and committed employees will remain in the organization compared to non-committed employees.

But lack of alternatives can lead weak affective and normative commitment into a strong continuance commitment (Ceylan & Bayram, 2006) and the common point in organizational commitment is that employees continue to remain in the organization whenever they feel positive or negative (Ozdevecioglu, 2003).

Organizational commitment is used to explain two deferring concepts which is attitudinal and behavioral (Malloy, 1996; Meyer & Allen, 1997). Engagement of oneself with the organization is reasoned by organizational commitment. Organizational Commitment itself carries a heavy impact of someone’s devotion, responsibility and loyalty to a task or an organization.

In other words, Organizational commitment is defined as the strength of an individual’s identification with the goals of an organization. Meyer and Allen (1991) hold that organizational commitment is a multidimensional construct comprising three components: affective, continuance and normative. Affective commitment has been defined as an employee’s emotional attachment to identification with an involvement in the organization. Employees with a strong affective commitment will remain in the organization because they want to.

On the contrary, Continuance commitment relates to one’s awareness of the costs associated with leaving the present organization. Employees whose commitment is in the nature of continuance will remain in the organization because they have to. The third component, normative commitment has to do with feeling of obligations to the organization based on one’s personal norms and values. Employees whose commitment to the organization is said to be of the normative type remains in the organization simply because they believe they ought to.

Interpreted by Concept/ Understanding

Steer (1977) An employee attitude and as a set of behavioral intentions.

Mowday (1979); Steers and Porters (1982);

Beckeri,Randal and Riegel (1995) Can be into three factors:

A strong belief in, and acceptance of the organization’s goals and values,

A willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization,

A strong desire to remain in the organization.

Northcraft and Neale (1996) An attitude reflecting an employee’s loyalty to the organization, an ongoing process of expression for the organization and its continued success and well being.

Allen and Meyer (1991) Consist of :

Affective Commitment:

Psychological attachment to organization

Continuance Commitment :

Costs associated with leaving the organization

Normative Commitment :

Perceived obligation to remain with the organization

The factors structures of Allen and Meyer’s (1996) organizational commitment scale have been examined in several studies. Some of these studies include measures from all the three components (affective, continuance, and normative) whilst others focus only on affective measure and/or continuance commitment measure.

Organizational Climate, Work Passion and Organizational Commitment

Employee surveys are one of the most common forms of data collection used by researchers and practitioners. Such surveys are used widely for describing the nature of an organization, assessing how well an organization is performing, benchmarking organizational performance against other organizations, and estimating the potential causal relationships between work practices and outcomes (Kraut, 2006).

Organizational climate may be defined as “the shared perceptions of organizational policies, practices, and procedures” (Reichers & Schneider, 1990), and indicates what the individuals requires to gain from their workplace (James et al, 2008). Organizational climate can be determined by the perceptions individuals have of their workplaces, as reflected by personal values and psychological desires (James et al., 2007; McMurray et al., 2010). Basically, Organizational climate (sometimes known as Corporate Climate) is the process of quantifying the “culture” of an organization; it precedes the notion of organizational culture. It is a set of properties of the work environment, perceived directly or indirectly by the employees, that is assumed to be a major force in influencing employee behavior. This shared perception which exhibit emotionally relevant cognition is linked to employees’ reaction towards the organization and influences their affective organizational commitment (James et al., 2008; Parker et al., 2003).

OC together with how well an individual is connected and the level of involvement in an organization (Allen and Meyer, 1990; Meyer and Allen, 1991; Mowday et al., 1979; Porter et al., 1974), has been identified as having a positive relationship with organizational citizenship behavior and job performance and is negatively related to absenteeism and turnover (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Cooper-Hakim & Viswesvaran, 2005). It is important in understanding OC, theoretically and practically because it has the most significant effect on organizational and individual performance of all work-related dispositional variables (Yang & Pandey, 2009).

Dunham (1984) stated that every attitude could be understood better by recognizing that every attitude has three distinct components, which are cognitive, affective and behavioral tendencies. Personality traits or dispositions are receiving increased attention as antecedents of work-related attitudes. Employees with positive affect are more likely to have positive attitudes to themselves and others, and tend to have an overall sense of well-being, whereas those with negative affect tend to feel anxious and tense (Luthans, 1995).

Work has various definitions differencing from science terms to art or management terms. Generally work is understood as a task or act done or performed by individual to ensure completion of a certain process or cycle of responsibility being entrusted with. Behavior plays an important role in our very action. Therefore, its timely to investigate the external factors as in Employer’s role in providing the required Organizational Climate as per discussed by Hay group. With the element being taken care of, the behavior of the employee is to be evaluated by their work passion towards their given task and role in an organization.

Developing the right behavior may stipulate the right attitude as in organizational commitment. Treating your organizational with utmost respect ensure growth for both components indeed. The right organizational climate creates the passion and this is required to see the impact of the commitment level to the organizational well-being.

CONCLUSION

It is not an easy task for management and organization to design and adapt organizational climate effectively without the support and dedication from employees’ themselves. However, management and organization can plan and design the best-fit approach to remain valid to all involved parties especially the employees. It is not just the monetary based benefits human capital today; there are other aspect that motivates and enhances their job involvement and affective commitment such as opportunities at work. This paper addressed the employee’s needs and expectation from the employer. As we are aware, an organization requires human capital to meets its business objectives’. Therefore, by understanding the tested Organizational Climate, the research will be able to emerge an improvised model to enhance employee’s work passion as well as organizational commitment. As well there is a room way for comparison between the practices between public and privately administrative universities. The kernel of having the right employee relates to work passion. The passionate employee will be able to contribute more efficiently towards the growth of the organization. An excellent organizational will enable an enhanced economic development.

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