Organizational Practices: The Linking Mechanism Between Culture and Climate

Practices, policies, procedures, and routines play a role in both culture and climate. They are viewed as artifacts in culture (Schein, 1992), whereas in the climate literature (e.g., L. R. James, 1982; Schneider & Reichers, 1983) they are viewed as the basis for the formation of climate perceptions. We propose that the set of actual practices, policies, and pro­cedures is the linking mechanism between culture and cli­mate (see Figure 22.1), not a measure of either culture or climate.

Several researchers and theorists (e.g., Burke & Litwin, 1992; Kopelman et al., 1990) assert that the organizational practices, management practices, policies, and procedures

(hereafter referred to generically as practices) adopted in an organization reflect cultural influences. Similarly, other work has examined the degree of (in)congruence between culture and actual organizational practices and has taken this to be a measure of culture strength or consistency or alignment (e.g., Dennison, 1990; Smart & St. John, 1996). That is, alignment between culture and practices is a separate variable or con­struct. This implies that (a) culture is not practices and (b) culture should lead to a set of practices, policies, proce­dures, and routines that are consistent with the underlying cultural values (e.g., Kopelman et al, 1990). To the degree that alignment is achieved, organizational functioning and effectiveness should be enhanced.

However, alignment between culture and practices is not sufficient for organizational effectiveness. Organizational members must perceive the practices in a manner consistent with the underlying- values and intended strategic goals. It is well accepted that practices are key ingredients in the deter­mination of an organization's climate (e.g., Burke & Litwin, 1992; L. R. James & Jones, 1974; Reichers & Schnieder, 1990). Yet it is not the objective practices themselves that are climate, but rather, organizational members' interpretations and perceptions of these properties in psychologically mean­ingfully terms (Rentsch, 1990) that define climate.

Therefore, culture can lead to a set of relevant practices that are then perceived by organizational members. Based on cul­tural assumptions, certain sets of practices and procedures should be adopted, in concordance with strategic goals. For example, a set of reward practices about how to treat cus­tomers, selection standards, and so forth may be adopted to be consistent with a culture that values the customer. To the ex­tent that organizational members perceive these practices to be consistent with a service focus and agree among themselves on their perceptions, a service-based organizational climate is said to exist in the firm (Schneider, 1990). This suggests the importance of practices as a mediating mechanism for linking culture and climate (Kopelman et al., 1990). Furthermore, it suggests that inconsistencies between culture and climate are likely to have occurred through some misalignment or poor implementation of the set of practices. If the adopted practices do not reflect the culture, or if practices are poorly imple­mented, climate perceptions may develop that are counter to the underlying cultural values and assumptions. In addition, these climate perceptions provide employees with direction and orientation about where they should focus their skills, attitudes, and behaviors in pursuit of organizational goals (Schneider et al., 1994). As implied in Figure 22.1, alignment between culture, practices, and climate is necessary for em­ployees to respond and behave in ways that will lead to orga­nizational effectiveness (e.g., Ostroff & Bowen, 2000).

It also is important to point out that organizations operate in multiple domains (Cameron, 1978) and that different configu­rations of organizational attributes will be relevant to different performance and effectiveness criteria (Ostroff & Schmitt, 1993). Hence we propose in Figure 22.1 that contextual fea­tures and strategic goals should enhance the formation of dif­ferent cultures, which in turn are expected to result in the adoption of different sets of practices and perceptions of orga­nizational climate.

Moving Across Levels of Analysis

In the culture literature, the term levels has been used to dis­cuss the different layers of culture (artifacts, values, assump­tions, ideologies) identified by Schein (1985,1992) and others (Trice & Beyer, 1993). In the climate literature, the term lev­els has been used in a manner consistent with the literature f on levels of analysis (i.e., on distinguishing among hierarchi­cal levels in the organization; e.g., Klein, Dansereau, & Hall, 1994; Ostroff, 1993a). Here, we use the term levels to refer to the organizational levels-of-analysis literature, and we distin­guish among the individual, subunit (e.g., group, division, plant, function), and organizational levels. We use the term or­ganizational or unit-level generically to refer to higher level constructs.

Levels-of-analysis issues are implicit in the culture litera­ture. Culture has been treated almost exclusively as a con­struct that resides at the organizational level. Yet, the conceptualization of culture rests upon shared meaning. Indi­viduals are believed to construct shared meanings based on their social construction of organizational realities. Thus, by definition, a multilevel process takes place in culture, moving from individual constructions of the situation and sense-making to the creation of shared meanings across people (see Figure 22.1).

In the climate area, levels issues are explicit. A levels-based distinction has been made between psychological and organi­zational climates (L. R. James & Jones, 1974) with the rela­tionship between them viewed as compositional. That is, there is isomorphism in the manifestations of the construct at differ­ent levels of analysis whereby the constructs share the same content, meaning, and construct validity across levels of analysis (Chan, 1998; L. R. James, 1982; Kozlowski & Klein, 2000). Because researchers have acknowledged that climate is based on the psychological meaning of the situation to indi­viduals (e.g., Rentsch, 1990), the unit of measurement begins with the individual. Only when these perceptions are shared across people does organizational climate become a meaning­ful construct (e.g., L. R. James, 1982; Payne, 1990). These levels-based constructs of composition are implicitly assumed

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in culture. Theory is based on shared meanings of culture but little research has examined whether shared meaning exists, and whether isomorphism and composition models are neces­sary or appropriate in culture.

Furthermore, there is the assumption that different cul­tures and climates can exist at different organizational levels of analysis. Culture researchers, for example, have docu­mented the existence of subcultures (e.g., Hofstede, 1998; Martin & Siehl, 1983), and climate researchers propose that functions, departments, or groups within an organization may develop different climates (e.g., Schneider & Bowen, 1985). We acknowledge that the content of the culture and climate can vary across groups within the organization and return to the implications of this after exploring the notion that climate and culture are emergent properties of organizations.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 680