The strength and quality of climate perceptions

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether and how climate strength and quality are related to employee commitment above and beyond individual climate perceptions.

Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected from 48 work units in organizations from different branches of industry. A total of 419 employees completed a questionnaire.

Findings - Climate quality was related to commitment above and beyond individual climate perceptions. However, this concerned the climate dimensions of cooperation and innovation, but not reward. Climate strength moderated the relationship between individual cooperation and innovation perceptions, and commitment.

Research limitations/implications - This study emphasizes the importance of group-level perceptions as related to employee commitment. Because of the cross-sectional design, conclusions about the causal order of the variables cannot be drawn.

Practical implications - If organizations want to increase employees' commitment they should put the more skeptical employees in positive work environments, thus, in units of higher cooperation and innovation quality.

Social implications - People are sensitive to the evaluative tone of their social environment.

Originality/value - The paper is the first to examine the combined relationships of individual climate perceptions, climate-strength, and climate quality with employee commitment.