Work Motivation and the Concept of Organizational Climate. Research Report No. 4

Although the hypothesis that behavior is a function of the person in interaction with his environment is a very old one, an overview of current theory and research on work motivation and job satisfaction reveals an emphasis on either one or the other sets of variables, at the expense of investigating systematically the interaction between personal and environmental variables. The literature on the concept of organizational climate and its relationship to organizational behavior is briefly reviewed in an attempt to find a framework within which the interaction hypothesis can be systematically investigated. The lack of specific conceptualization concerning organization climate and the multitude of noncomparable operational definitions of organizational climate is noted. The paper argues that this state of affairs makes the climate concept untractable and greatly distracts from the potential that this concept has for clarifying the study of the interaction hypothesis. It is suggested that the relatively explicitly stated expectancy models of motivation might not only help to provide conceptual clarity to the concept of organizational climate, but might also provide a framework within which the person-environment interaction hypothesis can be investigated. Such an approach should also increase our understanding of the work motivation process. (Author)