Abstract
Subject perceptions of their own power (5 dimensions) and their perceptions of 4 aspects of organizational climate were investigated as a function of three characteristics of the organizational work environment. The 2 × 2 × 3 (level of participation, stockholder or customer orientation, and position level, respectively) design (N = 120) was carried out in a laboratory setting. Climate and power perceptions were not strongly related to each other. Level of participation appeared to be the main contributor to self-perceived power both as a main effect and in interaction with stockholder/customer orientation and position level. Stockholder/customer orientation was the main contributor to climate perceptions, generally in interaction with one or the other environmental variable but also as a main effect. Participative decision-making results in decreased self-perceived power for occupants of higher positions. A customer orientation combined with participative decision-making leads to positive climate perceptions. The study, although highly controlled, yielded some results which are related to other research of this type.
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The authors would like to thank C. Michael Pfeifer for his helpful comments during the planning stages of this research. This research was partially supported by Office of Naval Research Contract N00014-67-A-0239-0025, Benjamin Schneider and H. Peter Dachler, Principal Investigators. Data analyses reported in this research were partially supported by the Computer Science Facility, University of Maryland.