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Determinants of organisational climate

for academia
a b
Adela McMurray & Don Scott
a
School of Management, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
b
School of Commerce and Management, Southern Cross
University, Lismore, Australia
Published online: 13 Aug 2013.

To cite this article: Adela McMurray & Don Scott (2013) Determinants of organisational
climate for academia, Higher Education Research & Development, 32:6, 960-974, DOI:
10.1080/07294360.2013.806446

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 Higher Education Research & Development, 2013
Vol. 32, No. 6, 960–974, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2013.806446

Determinants of organisational climate for academia

Adela McMurraya* and Don Scottb
a
School of Management, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia; bSchool of Commerce and
Management, Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia

Being aware of the factors that develop a positive organisational climate is

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especially important in universities, where the academic members of staff are, in

large measure, self-motivated. To identify the determinants of organisational
climate for university academia, the validity and reliability of the first-order
constructs of autonomy, cohesion and pressure were examined. These three
constructs were found to have inadequate validity in this environment. The
remaining five valid constructs indicated a second-order organisational climate
construct organisational climate was influenced by support, followed by trust and
fairness, and then by recognition and innovation. The findings of our study will
assist university managers to identify areas to focus upon when developing their
academic staff in the pursuit of improving the organisational climate.
Keywords: academic staff; management; organisational climate driver; university

Introduction
A good organisational climate plays a major role in enhancing an employee’s sense of
coherence, which, in turn, is related to changes in the employee’s well-being (Feldt,
Kinnunen, & Mauno, 2000). Since early-2000, the higher education sector has been
moving through a period of rapid change. With change always ‘in the air’, declining
job satisfaction and the challenge of replacing a wave of baby-boom professorial retire-
ments, Peterson and Wiesenberg (2004) have suggested that universities need to
improve their organisational climates in order to create a satisfying profession. For uni-
versities to retain elevated status, remain competitive and maintain a competent work-
force, university management needs to focus on organisational climate, which is
viewed as a key component of an organisation’s success (Altmann, 2000).
Organisational climate and its congruence with an individual’s value systems are
transmitted through management levels (Forte, 2004). These values act as part of the
work-integration process that relates to an employee’s fit or misfit into the organis-
ational environment (Kirsh, 2000), have implications for an employee’s organisational
commitment, effective functioning and productivity (McMurray, Scott, & Pace, 2004)
and are linked to job satisfaction and commitment, service quality and turnover
(Glisson & James, 2002).
The concept of organisational climate has been the subject of extensive research for
more than 40 years. There is consensus in the theoretical and empirical literature that
organisational climate is a psychological, multi-dimensional, complex phenomenon,
which has its intellectual roots in Koffa’s (1935) ‘behaviour environment’ and
Lewin’s (1936) notion of ‘life space’ within Gestalt psychology (Fink & Chen,

*Corresponding author. Email: adela.mcmurray@rmit.edu.au

© 2013 HERDSA
 Higher Education Research & Development 961

1995; James & Sells, 1981; Joyce & Slocum, 1982; Schneider & Snyder, 1975). Yurts-
ever and De Rivera (2010) found an emotional element to climate, developing a reliable
and valid scale that included factors of trust, hope and security, and claimed that organ-
isational climate influences the mental and physical efforts of both the mind and body
(Pace, 2003).
A number of writers have investigated organisational climate and have found that its
measurement tends to be context specific. For example, Ryder and Southey (1990)
examined the organisational climate dimensions in a building construction organisation
utilizing a modified version of the Jones and James (1979) organisational climate scale,
which yielded insights into both the individual and organisational levels of analysis.
They concluded that the instrument needed to be adjusted for different contexts to
allow for organisational-specific context processes. Organisational climate has also
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been studied in individualistic and collectivistic cultures. It has been shown that
employees from an individualistic culture are more sensitive to organisational
climate, whereas employees from a collectivistic culture pay greater attention to infor-
mation asymmetry (Tan, Smith, Keil, & Montealegre, 2003). The academic environ-
ment of a university is one where an individualistic culture can be expected to play a
major role. University management, therefore, needs to find ways to improve the organ-
isational climate for their academic staff.

Organisational climate measurement

Several early studies suggested components of organisational climate. For example,
Turnipseed (1990) nominated dimensions such as ‘cohesion, autonomy, job involve-
ment, innovation, general job orientation, work pressure, management control, super-
visory support and job structure’ (p. 247), all of which, according to Pace (2003),
reside under the control of management practices, in particular, leadership practices.
Rao’s (1999) cultural elements of openness, confrontation, trust, authenticity, proactiv-
ity, autonomy, collaboration and experimenting – together with top management and
HR staff styles – represent constituents in building organisational climate (Choudhury,
2011; Rao, Rao, & Yadav, 2007).
Both informal relations and their interplay with formal structures have been
described as ‘central to the real work of organizations’ (McAllister, 1995, p. 55),
with more recent research into preferences for formal and informal knowledge-
sharing tools linked to the antecedents of willingness to share and trust (Schwaer,
Biemann, & Voelpel, 2012).
Since 2002, other studies have related organisational climate to a range of variables
such as the human resource aspects of organisational life (McMurray, 2003), commit-
ment (Ashkanasy, Wilderom, & Peterson, 2000; Gormley & Kennerly, 2010;
McMurray, 2000), trust (Choudhury, 2011; Sani, 2012), attachment, socialisation
and careers (Ashkanasy et al., 2000). Other variables include empowerment (Mok &
Au-Yeung, 2002), organisational learning (McMurray & Dorai, 2001), the predisposi-
tion to report bad news and information asymmetry (Tan et al., 2003), the construction
of innovation (Park, Nepal, & Dulaimi, 2004), perceptions of support for innovation
(Montes, Moreno, & Fernández, 2004), organisational commitment (McMurray,
2000), innovative practice (Williams & McMurray, 2003) and the decision to unionise
(Myers, 2011). Trust has also been shown to be a factor of climate in educational insti-
tutions (Tingle, 2011) as it underpins relationships with colleagues, principals and
clients such as students and parents (Hoy, 2003). According to McInerney, Davenport
 962 A. McMurray and D. Scott

and Bekar (2005), values, trust and emotion establish a climate for knowledge manage-
ment in the changing workplace.
Thus, organisational climate is viewed as a descriptive construct reflecting percep-
tual agreement about organisational practices (for example, Koys & DeCotiis, 1991;
Moran & Volkwein, 1992) with elements of ‘organizational structure, management
support, reward, taking risk, participation in decision-making, communication, conflict,
a sense of belonging, acceptance team work and organizational image’ (Arabaci, 2010,
p. 4446).
Organisational climate is an important determinant of an organisation’s perform-
ance and is a critical element in determining its success (Burton, Lauridsen, & Obel,
2004). In the higher education sector, organisational climate may either facilitate
staff participation and effectiveness in teaching, research and scholarly activities or
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create barriers to this participation. Climate has also been linked to job satisfaction
and the decision to unionise among higher education faculty in the USA (Myers,
2011). In today’s competitive education environment, these variables represent
sources of competitive differentiation and advantage and, thus, are a potential source
for a university’s wealth creation.
Changes in higher education governance in the 1990s that moved strategic manage-
ment from ‘collegial’ to ‘corporate’ models, have impacted elements of climate by
reducing the influence of academics within institutions, particularly in areas of
decision-making (Aronowitz, 2006; Harman & Treadgold, 2007; Kenny, 2009) and
academic identity (Billot, 2010). Solutions designed to offset the imbalance in represen-
tation and encourage collaboration and support have included mentoring (Darwin &
Palmer, 2009; Gardiner, Tiggermann, Kearns, & Marshall, 2007) and a ‘trusteeship’
form of governance (Harman & Treadgold, 2007).
To date no ‘one-size-fits-all’ instrument has been completely developed and tested
for use in evaluating organisational climate, although instruments to discern climates
related to creativity and change (Isaken & Lauer, 2002) and work climate and inno-
vation (Mohyeldin & Suliman, 2001) have been developed around the concept of
organisational climate.
The focus in the measurement of organisational climate has been on the perceptions
of individuals, not on values or beliefs shared by groups (Mok & Au-Yeung, 2002) and,
in an attempt to condense the many disparate viewpoints on the concept of climate and
to develop a measurement instrument, Koys and DeCotiis (1991) employed a number
of techniques to reduce the concept to a manageable number of dimensions. They
reduced over 80 leading studies to the 45 that involved perceptual measures that set
out to describe (not evaluate) organisational events and did not address organisational
or task structures. These 45 studies were categorised into eight concepts thought to
reflect the climate universe (see Table 1).
For each category, questions were developed and the 40 psychometrically best ones
were used by Koys and DeCotiis (1991) in a partial validation study with two separate
samples of managerial and professional employees. Principal components analysis,
followed by an oblique rotation, partially supported the presence of the eight factors.
However, support was not absolute and their paper concluded with suggestions that
further research be carried out regarding instrument development.
Because of the inter-correlations of the dimensions determined by Koys and
DeCotiis (1991), it would seem that their climate dimensions could represent a set of
second-order dimensions of organisational climate. In this paper, the existence of
such a second-order construct was explored by using data obtained in a university
 Higher Education Research & Development 963

Table 1. Definition of each of the eight dimensions of the universe of psychological climate
perceptions (Koys & DeCotiis, 1991).
Dimension Definition
Autonomy The perception of self-determination with respect to work procedures, goals and
priorities.
Cohesion The perception of togetherness or sharing within the organisation setting
including the willingness of members to provide material aid.
Trust The perception of freedom to communicate openly with members at higher
organisational levels about sensitive or personal issues with the expectations
that the integrity of such communications will not be violated.
Pressure The perception of time demands with respect to task competition and
performance standards.
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Support The perception of the tolerance of member behaviour including the willingness to
let members learn from their mistakes without fear of reprisal.
Recognition The perception that member contributions in the organisation are acknowledged.
Fairness The perception that organisational practices are equitable and non-arbitrary or
capricious.
Innovation The perception that change and creativity are encouraged including risk-taking
into new areas where the member has little or no prior experience.

environment, and the instrument examination will be specific to such an environment.

However, evaluation of the validity of the dimensions of the organisational climate
measure and the levels of order present in the climate construct could also be of
value when considering the possible nature of the instrument(s) required in other
environments.

Methods
Population sample
The data that was used in this research was drawn from a single Australian university.
However, university academics are potentially very mobile and the staff at the univer-
sity at the time represented a wide range of disciplines and academic staff who had prior
experience at many different universities both inside and outside Australia. To ensure
that the data were maximally representative of the academic arm of the organisation, the
total population of academics was targeted. Accordingly, the survey was administered
to all 145 academic staff across six faculties at one centre of the university.
Table 2 shows the proportional distribution by state and country of the universities
where the respondent academics had obtained their final qualifications. The data shows
that the population under test, although drawn from a single university, represented the
cumulative experience and training of persons drawn from many regions of Australia
and from the rest of the world. The university faculties, from which the respondents
were drawn covered the areas of natural science, business, computing, education,
health science and sports science.
The climate survey was completed anonymously by 128 respondents, yielding an
overall response rate of 88.3%. This response rate was very high when compared to
the average levels of organisational research response rates of 52.7% (Baruch &
 964 A. McMurray and D. Scott

Table 2. Proportional distribution of final qualification

granting institutions of respondents.
Geographical area % of respondents
Australia
Australian Capital Territory 1.8
New South Wales 46.3
Queensland 11.3
South Australia 2.5
Tasmania 0.7
Victoria 7.5
West Australia 3.2
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International
Asia 2.1
Canada 1.4
Middle East 0.4
New Zealand 2.8
Pacific Islands 0.7
Africa 2.1
UK 8.3
USA 8.9

Holtom, 2008). As indicated by Rogelberg and Stanton (2007), a response rate such as
the one achieved provides considerable support to the credibility of the findings.

Questionnaire development
The statements used in this study were based on the 40-item instrument designed by
Koys and DeCotiis (1991). Minor modifications were made to the statements to make
them more appropriate for use in an Australian university context. For example, ‘My
boss is not likely to give me a “greasy meal”’ was re-worded to read ‘My superior is
not likely to give me a hard time’. The revised statements required subjects to describe,
not to evaluate, the climate within the university. The intention was to encourage the
respondents to draw on actual experiences as a basis for describing the climate. More-
over, in an effort to capture the perceptions of each member, as opposed to some
generic or organisation-wide perception, items such as ‘I feel like I never have a day
off’ were preferred to ‘People in this organisation feel like they never have a day off’.
In registering the extent of agreement/disagreement, a five-point numerical scale
was used, anchored at the ends by ‘Strongly agree’ and ‘Strongly disagree’. The ques-
tions were listed in random order in the questionnaire so that respondents’ scores would
not be biased by any perceptual linkage of the questions to specific groups of
associations.

Analysis
The scores obtained on the rating scales were used to test the Koys and DeCotiis (1991)
dimensions of organisational climate for validity and reliability. Using confirmatory
factor analysis and the structural equation program EQS (Bentler, 1989), the statements
 Higher Education Research & Development 965

for each dimension were analyzed to see whether, in each case, they formed a valid
construct. The variance extracted was calculated for each construct as a test of
construct validity. Reliability was assessed by means of Cronbach’s alpha (α)
(Cronbach, 1951).
Since the proposed dimensions were expected to be the components of a second-
order organisational construct, the next step was to address whether the constructs
that were acceptable would cumulatively form such a second-order model. When car-
rying out a model assessment, Bentler and Chou (1987) suggest that a ratio of 10
responses per free parameter is required to obtain trustworthy estimates. Bagozzi and
Heatherington (1994) have also suggested that using a disaggregated approach to
model analysis when there are a large number of items can lead to high levels of
error. The number of respondents was deemed to be insufficient to test a fully disaggre-
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gated second-order organisational climate model. This methodology has been rec-
ommended by a number of writers – for example, Bagozzi and Heatherington
(1994), Baumgartner and Homberg (1996) and von der Heidt and Scott (2007) –
who have indicated that an aggregated or partially aggregated approach can be used
when it will capture the essence of the underlying meaning of a concept and the
smoothing of random error. To assess whether all the dimensions were representative
of a second-order organisational climate model, a partially aggregated approach was
used, with composite scores for the valid first-order constructs relating to trust,
support, recognition, fairness and innovation. In line with Einhorn (1972), who indi-
cated that unit-weighted additive linear models are adequate, the composite scores
were created by determining the average value of the summed item scores for each
respondent. A second-order model created from these construct scores was then exam-
ined using maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis.

Results
The values obtained for the first-order constructs indicated a satisfactory level of
reliability for all measures (Nunnally, 1978) and were very much in line with those
obtained by Koys and DeCotiis (1991). However, three of the first-order constructs
did not yield satisfactory tests of validity because of a variance extracted value of
less than 0.5 (Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson, & Tatham, 2006, p. 777) and/or poor fit
statistics. These three constructs were autonomy, cohesion and pressure. The autonomy
construct did not fit the data well as evidenced by a very low adjusted goodness-of-fit
index (AGFI) value of 0.78, well below the normally acceptable level of 0.90, a stan-
dardised root mean square residual (SRMR) value of 0.06, greater than the accepted
maximum value of 0.05 and a variance extracted (VE) value of 0.52. The cohesion con-
struct yielded an acceptable fit with AGFI = 0.9, but the variance extracted value of 0.46
was less than the minimum acceptable level of 0.5. The pressure construct had an AGFI
value of 0.80, an SRMR of 0.06 and a VE of 0.40. Thus, the variance extracted values
for the cohesion and pressure constructs suggested that their indicator variables were
not good measures of these constructs, in that the variance attributable to error was
larger than the variance of the effects that were being measured. The poor fit indices
for the constructs suggested that some of the statements or construct indicators were
only poorly associated with the construct in question. These three constructs were,
therefore, not used in the remainder of the study. The recognition construct returned
an AGFI value of 0.84, which was low, however the other fit indices for this construct
were of an acceptable value, as was the variance extracted value, and, hence, this
 966 A. McMurray and D. Scott

Table 3. Suggested climate dimensions Cronbach α values, fit indices, factor loadings and
variance extracted.
Factor
Number Question α** CFI AGFI SRMR loading VE
Autonomy
6. I make the most of the 0.78
decisions that affect the
way my job is performed
7. I organise my work as I see 0.82
best
5. I schedule my own work 0.82 0.93 0.78* 0.06* 0.71 0.52
activities
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28. I set the performance 0.47*

standards for my work
34. I determine my own work 0.76
procedure
Cohesion
36. At work, people pitch in to 0.79
help each other out
15. At university, people tend to 0.52
get along with each other
27. At university, people take a 0.80 0.97 0.90 0.04 0.74 0.46*
personal interest in one
another
18. There is a lot of ‘team spirit’ 0.76
among my colleagues
1. I feel like I have a lot in 0.55
common with the
university people I know
Trust
40. I can count on my superior to 0.73
keep the things I tell him/
her confidential
20. My superior has a lot of 0.87
personal integrity
35. My superior is the kind of 0.88 0.99 0.93 0.03 0.79 0.59
person I can level with
26. My superior follows through 0.73
on commitments made to
me
8. My superior is not likely to 0.72
give me bad advice
Pressure
37. I have too much work to do 0.61
and too little time to do it
(reversed)
19. My organisation is a relaxed 0.63
place to work (reversed)

(Continued)
 Higher Education Research & Development 967

Table 3. (Continued ).
Factor
Number Question α** CFI AGFI SRMR loading VE
9. At home, I dread hearing the 0.76 0.90 0.80* 0.06* 0.45* 0.40*
telephone ring because it
might be a work-related
problem
25. I feel like I never have a day 0.68
off (reversed)
14. At work, too many 0.76
colleagues get ‘burned
out’ by the demands of
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their job (reversed)

Support
33. I can count on my superior to 0.88
help me when I need it
29. My superior is interested in 0.74
me getting ahead in the
organisation
11. My superior is behind me 0.89 1.00 0.98 0.01 0.80 0.62
100%
24. My superior is easy to talk to 0.78
about work-related
problems
17. My superior backs me up 0.73
and lets me learn from my
mistakes
Recognition
38. I can count on a pat on the 0.72
back when I perform well
23. The only time I hear about 0.56
my performance is when I
mess things up (reversed)
4. My superior knows what my 0.89
strengths are and lets me
know it
30. My superior is quick to 0.85 0.95 0.84* 0.04 0.88 0.55
recognise good
performance
16. My superior uses me as an 0.59
example of what to do
Fairness
13. I can count on a fair deal 0.92
from my superior
31. The objectives my superior 0.58
sets for my job are
reasonable
10. My superior is not likely to 0.85 0.99 0.93 0.03 0.64 0.54
give me a hard time

(Continued)
 968 A. McMurray and D. Scott

Table 3. (Continued ).
Factor
Number Question α** CFI AGFI SRMR loading VE
39. My superior does not play 0.74
favourites
22. If my superior reprimands 0.76
someone, the person
probably deserved it
Innovation
32. My superior encourages me 0.78
to develop my ideas
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12. My superior likes me to try 0.78

new ways of doing my
work
2. My superior encourages me 0.86 1.0 0.97 002 0.75 0.56
to improve on his/her
methods
21. My superior encourages me 0.83
to find new ways around
old problems
3. My superiors ‘talks up’ new 0.58
ways of doing things

Notes: *values that do not meet the established levels required; **Cronbach (1951);
CFI = Comparative Fit Index; AGFI = Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index; SRMR = Standardised Root Mean
Square Residual; VE = Variance extracted.

Table 4. Fit indices for the overall model.

Comparative Fit Index (CFI) 1.00
Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index (AGFI) 0.94
Standardised Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) 0.01
Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) 0.05
Cronbach alpha 0.93
Variance extracted (VE) 0.72

construct was retained. All other first-order constructs returned acceptable fit values.
The fit indices, Cronbach α and variance extracted values for the first-order constructs
are shown in Table 3.
The overall second-order model was next tested using the aggregation approach
outlined. The model testing procedure yielded a good fit when two pairs of error
term correlations were introduced into the model on the basis of the suggestions of
the modifications indices. These pairs of correlated error terms were those associated
with fairness and trust, and innovation and recognition. The existence of these corre-
lations between two sets of error terms suggested that measured effects common to
both paired variables were missing from the model. In a university environment, inno-
vation and recognition can be expected to be related to academic staff research activities
and it is to be expected that a research activity element would be common to both of
these measures – fairness and trust are components of the relationship between staff
 Higher Education Research & Development 969
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Figure 1. Second-order organisational climate assessment model.

members and the university management and could also have been a measure of the
internal political influences within the university. Therefore, it seemed logical to
include the inter-correlations and the correlation of these two sets of error terms in
the model (Gerbing & Anderson, 1984). The fit indices and indicator loadings for
this model are shown in Table 4.
The second-order organisational climate model is shown in Figure 1, together with
the individual construct loadings, error variances and error correlations.
The construct that evidenced the greatest influence on organisational climate was
support, followed by fairness and trust and then by innovation and recognition.

Discussion
While precise reasons for some of the effects identified are not yet known, previous lit-
erature and analysis can provide guidelines for our postulations. Constructs such as
autonomy, cohesion and pressure have been identified in the literature as being
aspects of the climate of an organisation. As Sani (2012) has pointed out, different
organisations will have different components making up their organisational climates
and it would appear that some of the measures of these constructs that have been ident-
ified as appropriate to a general business environment were not suitable measures in a
university environment.
In accordance with academic freedom, most university academic staff operate in an
environment with high levels of autonomy, in relation to their research efforts and
teaching-material choice. However, the questions for the autonomy construct may
have been viewed by the respondents as applying predominantly to the adherence to
 970 A. McMurray and D. Scott

teaching schedules and university-set examination timetables. Such an interpretation

may have led to two different responses, thus creating a large amount of noise in the
data, with a consequent poor level of explanation of the construct. Churchill (1979)
has suggested that this ‘noise’ arises from the incorporation into the data set of some
incorrect items. This result could indicate that some of the dimensions included by
Koys and DeCotiis (1991) may have contained elements that were not truly part of a
university climate measure.
Within a university context, academic staff tend to be individualistic and employed
as individual experts and, hence, may tend to focus on their own personal research
agendas. They also may not identify with cohesion in an organisational climate
sense, particularly in a changing or competitive organisational-culture environment.
This effect could be enhanced by the pressure on individuals to operate as individuals
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so as to publish and by a reliance on staff to develop and maintain their own materials
for the courses that they teach, again driving them towards individualism rather than to
organisational commitment. These elements would be associated with individual
motivation and work concerns, rather than with general organisational climate con-
siderations. This could be an explanation as to why the cohesion statements were
found not to produce an acceptable construct measure.
In a university environment, which is rapidly transforming to that of a corporate
business environment in terms of pressure, academic university staff operate very
much in the role of ‘independent consultants’, with a basic level of required teaching
activity and much freedom to determine the amount and nature of other work that
they undertake. The pressure to perform additional activities or a higher level of
research output may not constitute part of the organisational climate but may, rather,
relate to the individual’s own personality. Thus, while Australian university staff
have recently come under ever-increasing time pressures because of an increase in
student-staff ratios, this pressure might be seen very much as a personal or individual
issue, rather than as an organisational climate issue and, in this study, may have been a
reason for the pressure statements not yielding an acceptable construct.
Based on these considerations, it would appear reasonable that the autonomy, cohe-
sion and pressure dimensions were not found to be good measures when tested in a uni-
versity climate. Further research, using different sets of data and different statements,
will be required to evaluate the correctness of this postulation and to extend these find-
ings. A future study using mainly qualitative research such as focus groups could assist in
identifying any missing common elements related to trust, fairness, recognition and
innovation and whether there are more applicable measures for autonomy, cohesion
and pressure in the university environment. For example, while not within the scope
of this study, we acknowledge that trust has many antecedents that impact on climate,
such as informal leadership (McAllister, 1995) and the willingness to share information
(Schwaer et al., 2012), and such areas could be addressed in future research.

Conclusion
The study by Koys and DeCotiis (1991) considerably advanced the progress towards the
development of a valid instrument for measuring organisational climate. However, as
these researchers themselves identified, their suggested instrument was not conclusively
supported by the data that they had gathered and, as Patterson and colleagues (2005)
have noted, there are few well-validated measures of organisational climate.
 Higher Education Research & Development 971

This study has shown that not all of the dimensions of the questionnaire-based
organisational climate measurement instrument suggested by Koys and DeCotiis
(1991) represented valid dimensions when considered in a university environment.
This research has suggested that the five dimensions relating to trust, support, recog-
nition, fairness and innovation, will form a single second-order measure in a university
environment if several missing elements that are common to two groups of measures –
‘fairness and trust’ and ‘recognition and innovation’ – are allowed for in the organis-
ational climate model. The finding that individual measures of organisational climate
can form a second-order construct is an advance on the findings of Patterson and
colleagues (2005), whose measures of organisational climate did not form a second-
order construct, possibly because they attempted to develop a global measure of organ-
isational climate spanning different industries.
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The study findings seem to support the concept that organisational climate is
context-specific and that different dimensions or different measures of dimensions
will be required for different contexts (Sani, 2012).
This research has shown that for academic staff in a university environment, the
aspect of their work environment that affects their feelings about the climate of their
organisation is, firstly, support – and this area should be targeted by university manage-
ment seeking to improve the climate of their organisation and, hence, the performance
of the academic staff. The second most important group of measures are those of trust
and fairness, while the third group is innovation and recognition. Although it would be
tempting to assume that the latter set of measures is particularly related to research, that
would be an overly narrow interpretation, since innovative teaching and community
involvement can also create a need for innovation and recognition. Also, while trust
and fairness may initially be thought to relate especially to management-staff
interaction, this might not necessarily be the case – issues such as the approach to
theft of information from, and by, colleagues, or failure to adequately identify the
role of colleagues in joint activities, might also come into play and could point to a
need for staff to be thoroughly briefed in regard to the ethics involved in shared
work activities.
Further research is required to examine two issues:

(1) whether other organisationally-related indicators for cohesion, autonomy and

pressure are individualistically rather than organisationally determined in a
university environment and
(2) whether the second-order model in this research contains correlated errors –
correlated errors have been used in studies when they arise from an unknown
common source (Gerbing & Anderson, 1984) and the in-common missing
elements leading to these errors should be investigated.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge Carla Taines, Professor Barrow and the journal’s anon-
ymous reviewers for their valuable insights in the review and improvement of this paper.

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