Climate Strength: Its Role as a Moderator in the Relationship Between Climate and Turnover

Abstract

The effects of climate quality, defined as the shared perceptions of the work environment, on organizational outcomes is already well known and studied in the literature. However, in recent years, climate literature has paid increasing attention to a new construct: climate strength, which refers to the degree of agreement among employees about climate within a work unit or organization. To further investigate the role climate plays in organizational outcomes, the current study examines the effects of climate strength on turnover at the organizational level. For that, we used a sample composed of 25,288 individuals from 150 medium and large-sized organizations from different industries and tested the direct and moderating effect climate strength has on five climate dimensions at the level of collective turnover. The results obtained showed that, after controlling for organizational climate quality, climate strength moderates the relationship between climate quality and collective turnover in three out of five climate facets. When climate strength is high, the influence of organizational climate on turnover is strengthened, but when climate strength is low, this influence weakens. However, there was no direct effect found between climate strength and collective turnover.

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