A dispositional approach to psychological climate: Relationships between interpersonal harmony motives and psychological climate for communication safety

Abstract

and motivating environment to help employees fully unfold their potential (e.g., Pfeffer, 1994;Shalley et al., 2000). However, employees do not respond to the work environment mechanically, and their perception and interpretation of the environment are crucial in shaping their attitudinal and behavioural responses (James et al., 1978). For instance, a work environment designed to be motivating may not show the intended effects because employees do not perceive the environment as motivating (e.g., Deci et al., 1999). To address this issue, there has been considerable research in the past several decades on the role and dynamics of psychological climate -defined as 'the meanings that people impute to their jobs, co-workers, leaders, pay, performance expectations, opportunities for promotion, equity of treatment, and the like ' (James et al., 2008: 6). Psychological climate also has important practical implications, as it is related to a variety of major work outcomes, such as organisational commitment, job satisfaction, and performance (Carr et al., 2003;Parker et al., 2003). It is important to note that we are concerned with processes at the individual level, and research on organisational climate (Schneider et al., 2011), which conceptualizes climate as a property of an organisation, is not our focus.Despite the well-documented importance of psychological climate, our knowledge of its antecedents is surprisingly limited. This gap is problematic because a theory of psychological climate is incomplete without a clear understanding of the factors that shape its formation. Indeed, Parker et al. (2003: 408) recommended that 'clarifying the origins of psychological climate perceptions would help to clarify the specific mechanisms by which perceptions of the work environment influence individual outcomes.' The limited research on the antecedents of psychological climate has primarily focused on situational factors, such as 3 supportive supervisor, rewarding co-worker relationships, and high-performance human resource practices (e.g., May et al., 2004;Wei et al., 2010), which are conceptualized as cues for drawing inferences about the nature of a workplace. This line of work, while important, does not consider the possibility that people exhibit some degree of across-situation consistency in the perception of psychological climate because they tend to confirm what they are prepared to see (Snyder and Ickes, 1985). For example, some employees complain vehemently about their work environment even if many other employees perceive the same environment as attractive (Grensing-Pophal, 2001). Situational factors are not the only antecedents of psychological climate, as Brown and Leigh (1996: 359) suggested that 'psychological climate is likely to result from individual differences among employees, from differences in situations (i.e. features of organizational environments), as well as from the interaction between the person and situation.' The lack of research on dispositional antecedents of psychological climate limits the...

Beyond Risk-Taking

“…Harmony scales developed by Leung et al (2011) were used to measure harmony, which is recently applied in a work setting (Wang, Leung, & Zhou, 2014). Harmony enhancement was assessed by 12 items, and a sample item was "Maintaining interpersonal harmony is an important goal in life."…”

Creativity and social alienation: the costs of being creative

“…The realization of creative ideas may call for better development of individuals' networking ability, because Asian cultures often place more value on inter-personal relationships (Rhee & Ji, 2011). The correlation between self-reported creativity/creative personality and harmony enhancement is positive (r ¼ 0.58 and 0.65), which dovetails the finding that people who endorse harmony enhancement are more likely to perceive safer psychological climate that may encourage their innovative performance (Wang et al, 2014). Table 2 shows that hierarchical regressions are run separately using creative personality and self-reported creativity as independent variables.…”

“…Confucian-oriented societies place great value on harmony; therefore, an individual' harmony enhancement motive decides if he or she can have high-quality social capital or strong ties with others. Harmony enhancement motive is an active approach to resolve conflicting opinions and disagreements by attempting to strengthen the relationships among those involved (Leung, 1997;Wang, Leung, & Zhou, 2014). It should be noted that although networking ability and harmony enhancement motive indicate the richness of an individual's social capital, those two concepts are theoretically and empirically different.…”

“…They treat conflicts and rejections not as signs of deteriorating relationships, but as actions necessary to achieve terminal harmony. Thus, creative employees with a harmony enhancement motive are more likely to perceive a safer psychological climate for expressing their novel ideas than their peers who do not possess this motive (Wang et al, 2014). Engagement in frequent, spontaneous, informal and direct information exchange with others leads to better problem solving, enhances innovative performance and prevents social alienation in working groups.…”

“…We used the 12-item harmony enhancement scale developed by Leung and Morris (2011), which has been validated in China (Wang et al, 2014), Australia (Leung & Morris, 2011) and Singapore (Lim, 2009). The sample items included 'The idea that interpersonal harmony promotes wealth is a wise one' and 'Maintaining interpersonal harmony is an important goal in life' (a ¼ 0.90).…”