Conceptualizing and Measuring Organizational and Psychological Climate: Pitfalls in Multilevel Research

Abstract

Organizational and psychological climate research has been plagued by cross-level inference problems. This paper advocates treating the organization as the unit of theory for organizational climate while preserving the individual as the unit of theory for psychological climate. It examines multilevel conceptual problems in climate research and discusses strategies/or improving the validity and assessing the reliability of measurement. Additional multilevel research on climate and other areas of organizational science, particularly organizational culture, is encouraged.