Climate and Culture: Interaction and Qualitative Differences in Organizational Meanings

The relationship between people's membership in social-interaction groups and the meanings they attach to organizational events was investigated. It was hypothesized that people who interacted together would interpret organizational events similarly and that different interaction groups would interpret organizational events differently. Interview and questionnaire data were collected from 64 members of an accounting firm. The data were analyzed with network analysis and multidimensional scaling. The results provide evidence that people who interacted with each other had similar interpretations of organizational events and that members of different interaction groups attached qualitatively different meanings to similar organizational events. Methodological, theoretical, and practical implications of the results are discussed.