Organizational climate

The issue of the role of the organizational climate drew my attention. I found a very interesting article named: The Role of National Culture and Organizational climate in safety training effectiveness by Burke, Michael J., Chan-Serafin Suzanne, Salvador Rommel, Smith Alex and Sarpy Sue Ann in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 2008,17 (1), 133-152.

Using data from 68 organizations embedded within 14 nations, the authors examine hypotheses concerning the moderating roles of national culture and organizational climate on the transfer of training to the work context.

Hypothesis: As Organizational climate becomes more strategically focused on safety, the safety training – safety performance effect will increase.

Since the authors expected the existence of a positive correlation between the strategic focus of the organizational climate on safety and the effect of safety training on safety performance, the authors expected the same organizational context to be supportive of the transfer of acquired safety knowledge and skills to the job, translating into conditions that make it unlikely for individuals to have accidents/injuries in the future (p.141)

As the results section of the article describes:

The present results suggest that enhancing organizational safety climate will have a positive impact on the transfer of this training to the work setting in terms of reducing accidents and injuries. The latter point is important, as it implies that a positive organizational safety climate can, in some cases, counteract cultural values that possibly underlie the adoption of suboptimal resource practices (p.146).

I found the previously mentioned article quite interesting and I encourage all of you to check it out.