Validating the NOCM_UH-R : An Organizational Climate Measure for Universities and Colleges

Abstract

The present study describes the development of the Norwegian Organizational Climate Measure_UH (NOCM_UH), and the validation of the reduced version of the instrument, the NOCM_UH-R (Hoff 2010; 2011b). The NOCM_UH is a new version of the Organizational Climate Measure (OCM) by Patterson et al. (2005), and was developed in order to measure climate at universities and colleges in Norway. The study was carried out on a sample of 669 respondents from three educational institutions in Norway. Structural equation modeling was conducted to test the fit of the model. The 22 dimensions constituting the NOCM_UH-R had acceptable levels of reliability and were factorially distinct, thereby supporting the 17-latent factor structure constituting the original OCM. However, most of the new dimensions in the NOCM_UH-R were more relevant for scientific employees than administrative and technical staff. Furthermore, the survey targeted at universities had a methodological weakness, as opposed to the one targeted towards colleges, that resulted in a lack of consensual validity. This implies that the data does not qualify for aggregation to reflect a higher level construct, and that the version for universities is not measuring organizational climate in organizations, but only measure individual employee perceptions of different aspects of the work environment.