ARTÍCULOS DE INVESTIGACIÓN

Aportes teóricos y empíricos al estudio del clima organizacional. Una reflexión en organizaciones públicas

Theoretical and empirical contributions to the study of the organizational climate. a reflection in public organizations

Arévalo Ascanio, Msc. José Gregorio; Navarro Claro, Msc Genny Torcoroma; Bayona Trillos, Msc. Ramón Armando

Msc. José Gregorio Arévalo Ascanio

jgarevaloa@ufpso.edu.co

Universidad Francisco de Paula Santander – Sede Ocaña Colombia

Msc Genny Torcoroma Navarro Claro

gtnavarroc@ufpso.edu.co

Universidad Francisco de Paula Santander – Sede Ocaña Colombia

Msc. Ramón Armando Bayona Trillos

rabayonat@ufpso.edu.co

Universidad Francisco de Paula Santander – Sede Ocaña Colombia

Revista Científica Profundidad Construyendo Futuro

Universidad Francisco de Paula Santander, Colombia

ISSN: 2422-1783

ISSN-e: 2422-2518

Periodicidad: Semestral

vol. 4, núm. 4, 2016

profundidad@ufpso.edu.co

Recepción: 15 Septiembre 2015

Aprobación: 08 Octubre 2015

URL: http://portal.amelica.org/ameli/journal/737/73739697373969001/

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22463/24221783.2272

Modelo de publicación sin fines de lucro para conservar la naturaleza académica y abierta de la comunicación científica

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Resumen: El desarrollo de un buen clima organizacional en las empresas, se ha convertido en una preocupación a nivel global, no sólo por su repercusión en la salud de los trabajadores sino también por su influencia en la prestación de un buen servicio y en consecuencia en la satisfacción de los clientes y la productividad de las empresas. Por lo anterior, en el presente artículo se hace una reflexión de los aportes teóricos y empíricos de diversos autores sobre el desarrollo del clima organizacional en instituciones de carácter público, dando como resultado un alto consenso en cuanto a la importancia de estudiar el tema, puesto que permite conocer las percepciones de los directivos y trabajadores así como identificar fortalezas y debilidades que afectan directamente a la organización.

Abstract: The development of a good organizational climate in companies, has become a global concern, not only for its impact on the health of workers but also for its influence on the provision of good service and consequently in customer satisfaction, and the productivity of companies. Due to the above, in this article a reflection is made of the theoretical and empirical contributions of various authors on the development of the organizational climate in public institutions, resulting in a high consensus regarding the importance of studying the subject; post that allows to know the perceptions of managers and workers as well as identify strengths and weaknesses that directly affect the organization.

Keywords: Organizational climate, public company, public sector, instrument.

1. INTRODUCTION

According to the point raised by (Caligiore & Diaz, 2003). An organization is a group of people with specific responsibilities, who must necessarily develop activities together to achieve a common goal in favor of the organization. This is conformed by a structure and a group of people that share and interrelate among them and participate in the same internal environment that is nothing more than the organizational climate that prevails in the company. About the organizational climate as defined by Arias (2005), cited by (Iglesias & Sanchez, 2015) refers to ... the perceptions shared by a group of individuals from their work environment

... is also considered a filter through which events pass of the organization that together with the perceptions and attitudes of the people that make it up, generate a climate affecting directly the motivations and the general behavior in it. In this sense, the study of the organizational climate has gained great importance and several authors have dedicated much of their work to this topic and to the structuring of instruments that allow their measurement. In contrast to the above, through this article a reflection is made on the theoretical and empirical contributions to the study of organizational climate in public entities, including articles published in the databases Scopus, Science Direct, Scielo, and Redalyc, this reflection was approached from three axes: in the first, an approximation is made to the concept of the organizational climate. In the second, the instruments most used in CO studies are addressed. In the third, an analysis of the empirical investigations in the area is made and finally the conclusions of the project are presented.

APPROACH TO THE CONCEPT OF ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE (CO)

The importance of the individual and the existence of a close relationship between the human factor and the organization generate the perceptions that mark the interactions taking place in the organizational context; these perceptions of the members of the group are identified as the organizational climate.

From these perspectives and according to this “this phenomenon is an expression of the perceptions or interpretations that the individual makes of the internal environment of the organization in which he participates” (Naranjo, Paz, & Marìn, 2015, page 108).

For the same authors, the organizational climate is understood as the perception that, individuals have of the organization for which they work, and the opinion that has been formed of it in aspects such as leadership style, communication, motivation, rewards and retribution, among others, as well as the way in which these aspects have a direct influence on the behavior and performance of people.

(Bernal, Pedraza, & Sánchez, 2015), state that: Studying the organizational climate (...) is currently one of the strategic tools that contribute to the continuous improvement of the organization, since through its analysis it is possible to identify key elements that they allow to raise the quality of working life "(page 9). This is due to the influence that this phenomenon has on the motivation and performance of employees, which brings with it remarkable consequences in productivity, satisfaction, commitment and quality of work.

Consequently, Schneider cited by (Lasio, 2003), proposes a different view of climate, transferring it to the strategic field. According to this author, the generic climate has no meaning: it can be everything and nothing. Schneider explains that the strategic orientation indicates that all the subsystems of the organization must be aligned with the strategic objective of creating a climate of interest and develops its approach to customer service as a strategic objective. Climate is a complex concept but with great potential in terms of achieving the strategic objectives of the companies, when it is properly understood and applied.

“A positive climate favors the fulfillment of the objectives (...), indicates a feeling of belonging to it. On the contrary, a negative climate implies a lack of identification with the objectives and destroys the work environment, promoting situations of conflict and low performance “(Peraza & García, 2004, page 27). From these perspectives, the authors themselves state that it is top management, with its culture and management systems, that provides or not the right terrain for a good climate and is part of human resources policies to improve that environment, with the use of precise techniques. That is why the management team should know the perceptions of the workers, in terms of finding the most appropriate ways to develop a favorable environment in the entity.

MEASUREMENT INSTRUMENTS OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE

According to Seiffert (1977), cited by (Ramírez, 2010), science has the qualities of being methodical, reflective, formal and critical. It uses the scientific method for its progress, with the use of specific techniques for each area of the knowledge, agreed and recognized by each scientific community for its use. In the same sense, Tamayo-Tamayo (2000), cited (Ramírez, 2010) states that the scientific method seeks accuracy and improves the accuracy of results when new knowledge is generated and in turn enables the development of new methods, supported by the techniques necessary for the investigation, which are the procedures and instruments by means of which reality is observed, analyzed and manipulated. These techniques are subordinate and directly dependent on the scientific method and the research methodology.

In accordance with the mentioned before, (Centty, 2006) refers to techniques such as methodological and systematic procedures that are responsible for operationalizing and implementing research methods and have the ability to collect information immediately.

Considering the above approaches, a review of the methodology and techniques used in investigations on the organizational climate was conducted, as described below: Initially, the study conducted by (Peña, 2005), who cite Tamayo and Tamayo (2001), assumes the performance of an exploratory- descriptive type of work, which is carried out with a view to obtaining faithful and safe data for future study systematization.

In this same study, a description is given of the two fronts addressed: initially, exploratory type research, citing Hernández, Fernández, and Baptista (2001), by stating that this type of research serves to familiarize oneself with relatively unknown phenomena that professionals of a given type consider a crucial area, identifying promising concepts or variables, establishing priorities for subsequent research or suggesting verifiable statements.

Secondly, they approach the descriptive studies that according to Dankhe (1968), in Hernández et al. (2001) cited by (Peña, 2005), seek to specify the important properties of people, groups, communities or any other phenomenon that is subject to analysis.

Now, in relation to the technique used to collect the information, the researchers turned to other studies on the design of tools to explore the organizational climate in the organizational structures, which revealed that the most used and adequate technique to achieve the objectives, it is through measurement scales allowing in this way to collect information from a large number of subjects quickly and economically confidential. Consequently designed a scale with a "Likert" response format (Ortiz and García 2002) cited by (Peña, 2005).

In a second investigation conducted by ( Castillo & Pérez, 2011), to determine the organizational climate, the type of descriptive research was used, using as an instrument of organizational climate measurement, the CFK Ltd. that originally is a self-applied instrument used to measure the perception of the organizational climate in educational institutions, their items were constructed on a Likert-type scale, designed with a set of items presented in the form of affirmations and with a numerical assessment that allowed them to obtain a score with respect to each of the statements and in the end a total score, in relation to all the statements, this instrument was validated by pairs and later after adjustments were applied to the selected sample. To contextualize it in the medium, it was submitted to peer evaluation, who suggested changes for its application.

In the same way (Sampieri, Méndez, & Contreras, 2012), analyzed the organizational climate through the descriptive methodology of quantitative type, its procedures were based on the literature review and the model of competing values, for the operationalization of the variables used a standardized questionnaire, which was based on two instruments: the first, the organizational climate measure based on the model of the values in competition of Quinn and Rohrbaugh (Patterson et al., 2005), and the second the Uni scale of the organizational climate validated for the Mexican working environment (Hernández Sampieri 2006 and 2004). The scales used in the designed instrument were of a Likert type with four response options: two positive and two negatives. On the other hand, (Silvestre, 2013) focused his research in two stages, one qualitative and the other quantitative. In the first stage, he made a comparative design with three focus groups according to employee categories: managers, administrative staff and teachers, using visualization techniques in Participatory Programs (VIPP, sf), such as drawings, visualized exhibitions and visualization cards, as well as the application of a structured questionnaire. In the second stage, a survey was carried out using the final questionnaire, this contained demographic data, employee category, and labor unit, which were used as independent variables.

Similarly (Cardona & Zambrano, 2014), citing Beltran, (2005), they sought to systematically establish the determinant characteristics of the organizational climate in various assessment instruments, conducting their research with a quantitative approach at a descriptive level, using the methodology of the systematic review of the literature.

In line with the mentioned studies (Segredo, Pérez, & López, 2015), addresses the issue of organizational climate instruments as a working tool for the management teams to act in their management. The authors consider that they provide inputs to the management teams so that, in a coordinated, timely and planned manner, they design change strategies aimed at reversing the identified situation and stimulating development in the organizations.

Finally (Segredo, Pérez, & López, 2015) identified the need to construct and validate an instrument for the organizational climate that responded to the characteristics of health organizations in the Cuban context, for this purpose they divided the methodology into two moments: a first moment dedicated to the review of the literature, the instruments and measurement systems used in previous studies through a bibliometric study, and a second moment in which they identified the dimensions and their categories, likewise the criteria by category were established for each dimension, created as a statement and as a response option a Likert scale.

EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE

With the goal of exploring the studies on organizational climate in public organizations, a systematic review was performed (from 2007 to 2016) in Science Direct, Redalyc, Scielo and Ebsco Host, based on descriptors such as organizational climate, work climate, climate emotional, public organizations and the public sector. The established

limits were: articles published in indexed journals, as well as theses from national and international universities whose subject matter was applicable to the context of public organizations. 11 documents were directly related to the proposed descriptors were found. It should be clarified that the following is not intended in any way to be complete work, for which it is necessary and pertinent to considerably expand the research reviewed.

Table 1 presents the empirical documents found, with their authors, titles, objectives, and methodology used.

Table 1.

Empirical documents

# | Autors | Title | Objective | Methodology used
1 | Javier Viloria Escobar, Saúl Pertúz Gutiérrez, Alexander Daza | Approach to the organizational climate of a health promoter company. | Make an approximation to the organizational climate of a health promotion company based on the analysis of employee motivation levels. (Viloria, Pertúz and Daza) | Descriptive qualitative- quantitative analysis conducted in Santa Marta, Colombia between March and September 2014 in a population of 35 employees.
Corredor, Lilibeth Pedraza Álvarez.
2 | Javier Carreón Guillén. | Labor commitment of social work in the health sector. | Establish the reliability and validity of an instrument that measures work commitment in the health sector. (Carreón) | A correlational study was carried out. With a sample of 125 professionals (75 women and 50 men and who had 7 years of graduation) of social work of health centers in the state of Morelos (Mexico)
3 | Miguel Alejandro Bustamante Ubilla, Maderline Lissette Grandón Avendaño y María del Carmen Lapo Maza | Characterization of the organizational climate in highly complex hospitals in Chile. | Characterize the organizational climate within 2 high complexity hospitals in Chile, determining the most and least influential dimensions. (Bustamante, Grandón and Lapo) | The study context corresponds to 2 hospitals of high complexity in the Maule region of Chile. To a sample of 561 officials
4 | Alina María Segredo Pérez, Lliliams Rigñack Ramírez, Rosa María García Nieblas, Irene Perdomo Victoria, Pablo León Cabrera, Ana Julia García Milián. | Organizational climate assessment in institutions teachers of the University of Medical Sciences of La Havana | Evaluate the organizational climate in educational institutions of the University of Medical Sciences of Havana. (Segredo, Rigñack and García) | Descriptive research, evaluative in educational institutions of the University of Medical Sciences of Havana. Three dimensions were studied: organizational behavior, organizational structure and management style.
5 | Agnolys Tapias Cuadrado. | Diagnosis of the organizational climate in the administrative area of the Universidad Tecnológica del Chocó "Diego Luis Córdoba | Make a diagnosis of the organizational climate in the administrative area of the Technological University of Chocó "Diego Luis Córdoba | Descriptive analytical study. The target population was constituted by the administrative staff of the University, which is made up of 233 employees
6 | Bibiana Cubillos Rivera, Fabián Camilo Velásquez Muriel y Milena Reyes Nova | Plan for the improvement of organizational climate variables that affect job performance in a State entity. | Design an improvement plan aimed at the intervention of organizational climate variables that are negatively affecting the work performance of a company in the public sector. (Cubillos, Velásquez and Reyes | Quantitative, descriptive and proactive approach. All officials were taken into account, 121 in total, linked to the personnel plant of the Entity.
7 | José Ignacio Ruiz Pérez, Carolina Bringas Molleda, Francisco Javier Rodríguez Díaz y Eduardo García Cueto. | Transcultural validation of an emotional climate scale for penitentiary organizational areas | Adapt a scale of emotional climate and in turn establish the factors that make up and the relationship of these with the degree of burning of prison workers in the development of their work. (Ruíz, Bringas and Rodríguez) | The participants are 728 workers of
8. | Daniel Pérez Zapata, Jennifer Peralta Montecinos y | Influence of organizational variables on the quality of working life of public health sector officials in the extreme north of Chile. | Describe the quality of working life and its relationship with the organizational climate, job satisfaction and engagement in officials of public health organizations in the city of Arica, Chile. (Pérez, Peralta and Fernández) | The sample studied corresponds to 142 adult subjects, of both sexes.
Paula Fernández Dávila.
9 | Roger Manuel Patrón Cortés y Edith J. Cisneros Cohernour. | The organizational climate for innovation: case study of a University Latin American | Analyze the organizational climate at the Autonomous University of Campeche. (Patrón and Cisnero | Exploratory study of a descriptive type, divided into two stages: a) quantitative measurement, and b) qualitative evaluation.
10 | Yves Brito y Juan Carlos Jiménez. | University Organizational Climate Evaluation. | Evaluate the organizational climate in the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Carabobo, in order to identify opportunities for improving institutional performance. (Brito and Jiménez) | A non-probabilistic sample was taken from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Carabobo.
Case: Faculty of Engineering - University of Carabobo
11 | María Margarita Chiang Vega, Carlos Mauricio Salazar Botello y Antonio Núñez Partido. | Organizational climate and job satisfaction in a state health facility: Hospital type 1. | Know the relationship of the organizational climate and job satisfaction in workers of a health institution of the state sector. (Chiang, Salázar and Núñez) | Empirical cross-sectional descriptive study. The population is made up of the professional, technical and administrative staff of type 1 hospital.

Starting the discussion, regarding the empirical documents on organizational climate in localized public organizations, most of them were developed in Chile (28%), Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico (18% in each country), and in Venezuela (the 9%). t is striking that another (9%) of the studies were carried out jointly between Colombia and Spain.

It is to add, that the empirical documents found in public organizations, according to the year of publication, are distributed between 2007 and 2011 on the one hand, which corresponds to 18% of publications (2 investigations) and on the other side, between 2012 and 2016 is the remaining 82% (9 investigations).

Regarding the type of publication in the empirical documents on organizational climate in public organizations, ten (91%), have been published as scientific articles of indexed journals, which means that they have gone through a process of selection and analysis by part of peer evaluators. On the other hand, one (9%) of publications obeys a master's thesis.

By focusing on the methodological approach taken by the different empirical works and specifically in its unit of analysis, it should be underlined that 45% (5 investigations in each) have been developed in the university context and in hospital centers and the rest, that is, 10% have been carried out in penitentiary centers in Colombia and Spain. The majority of the methodological approaches adopted are Descriptive, transversal and correlational. Quantitative research, a qualitative methodological approach, and research combining both approaches are highlighted.

CONCLUSIONS

Studying the organizational climate offers the possibility to discover problems of the company, knowing the perceptions of businessmen, managers and workers, and identifying the presence of strengths and weaknesses of the same. A favorable or balanced climate means acting on the problems detected and promoting the change in the organization manifested in a higher quality of the products and services, greater satisfaction of the human resources of a company and better social and commercial relations with customers.

It is not advisable to talk about organizational climate without penetrating in depth the workers' perceptions about working conditions, opportunities for promotion and growth, recognition systems and sanctions, as well as the organization's own philosophy; since these variables determine the degrees of confidence and strengthen the establishment of climates in accordance with established business objectives.

As can be observed in the researches studied on the organizational climate, in short the most common methodology for this type of work is the descriptive one with a quantitative approach, using as an instrument for the collection of information questionnaires that are elaborated taking into account the variables of the CO and supported on a Likert scale for its assessment and subsequent tabulation and analysis of results. It is clear that there are some structured instruments for assessing CO, however, none of them combines the characteristics in their entirety, which means then that the dimensions to be studied and their application for each particular case must be considered.

It can be concluded that the development of the topic “organizational climate” in public organizations has been studied mainly in the countries of Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela, which means that in these nations is where most interest is given to this subject; however, one could speak of bias due to the predominance of Latin American studies.

The results obtained represent the basis on which new research could be undertaken to go deep in the topic of organizational climate in public organizations, so it is recommended that the studies derived from this initial investigative exercise be framed in the improvement of the practices that they have been applied to the organizations analyzed, with the purpose of promoting the development of the potential of each of the servers.

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