Coping With Paradoxical Demands Through an Organizational Climate of Perceived Organizational Support: An Empirical Study Among Workers in Construction and Mining Industry

What is it about?

In an empirical study in 137 workgroups in construction and mining industry we identified a second-order organizational climate that was associated with staff safety, health, innovations and team effectiveness. The results also indicated that such a meta-climate could be represented by an organizational climate of perceived organizational support (POS).

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Why is it important?

Most organizations must be able to not have a high level of production but also provide safe and healthy working conditions, and be innovative to secure long-term competitiveness. The need for organizations to accommodate such competing demands, rather than choosing one before the other, is increasingly acknowledged. Our results suggest that a second order organizational climate of POS, characterized by the shared apprehension that the organization respects and values its employees, cares about their well-being, and appreciates their work efforts, may support the employees to accommodate paradoxical demands by giving space for situation-adapted judgments of priorities, while still maintaining a variety of goals salient in the long term. A POS-climate may thus benefit safety and health, as well as innovativeness and production effectiveness, and may provide a heuristic for managers in decision making.