Employee involvement climate and climate strength:
a study of employee attitudes and organizational effectiveness in UK
hospitals
Bosak, JanineORCID: 0000-0001-5701-6538, Dawson, Jeremy, Flood, Patrick C.ORCID: 0000-0002-2465-7432 and Peccei, RiccardoORCID: 0000-0001-7255-8378
(2017)
Employee involvement climate and climate strength:
a study of employee attitudes and organizational effectiveness in UK
hospitals.
Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, 4
(1).
pp. 18-38.
ISSN 2051-6614
Purpose – Addressing the continuing productivity challenge the purpose of this paper
is to analyze data from the National Health Service (NHS) on employee involvement
(EI) in order to gain critical insights into how employees’ shared perception of
employee involvement in organizational decision-making (labelled EI climate) might
address two persistent issues: how to enhance positive staff attitudes and improve
organizational performance. In doing so we respond to recent calls for more
multilevel research and extend previous research on EI climate by attending to both
EI climate level and EI climate strength.
Design/methodology/approach – Data from 4702 employees nested in 33 UK
hospitals was used to test the moderating role of EI climate strength in the (a) crosslevel EI climate level-employee attitudes relationship and in the (b) organizationallevel EI climate-organizational effectiveness relationship.
Findings – The results of the multilevel analyses showed that EI climate level was
positively associated with individual-level employee attitudes (i.e. job satisfaction,
affective commitment). Further the results of the hierarchical regression analysis and
the ordinal logistic regression analysis showed that EI climate level was also related
to organizational effectiveness (i.e. lower outpatient waiting times; higher
performance quality). In addition, both analyses demonstrated the moderating role of
EI climate strength, in that the positive impact of EI climate level on employee
attitudes and organizational effectiveness was more marked in the presence of a
strong compared to a weak EI climate.
Practical implications – By creating and maintaining a positive and strong climate
for involvement hospital managers can tackle the productivity challenge that UK
hospitals and health care institutions more generally are currently facing while
improving the attitudes of their employees who are critical in the transformative
process and ultimately underpin organizational success.
Originality/value – This is the first study which provides evidence that favorable and
consistent collective recognition of EI opportunities by staff contributes to enhance
both employee attitudes and hospital performance. Results highlight the role of EI
climate strength and underscore its importance in future research and practice.
Item Type:
Article (Published)
Refereed:
Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:
EI climate; climate strength; hospital performance; employee attitudes