Abstract
The subjects were care workers and nurses at a geriatric health services facility. The objectives were to confirm the factorial structure and invariance of a good organizational climate and to investigate the relationship between the degree of favorability in the organizational climate and the inter-occupational factorial invariance, as well as to investigate the relationship between the degree of favorability of the organizational climate and the Sense of Coherence; i.e. the relationship between stress coping ability and a health maintenance index. To achieve these objectives, simultaneous multi-group analysis was performed using anonymous, self-administered questionnaires.
The results indicated that the degree of organizational climate favorability showed inter-occupational consistency and allowed for the identification of the following four factors: 1. Clarity of role objectives; 2. Psychological reward; 3. Trust and cooperation; and 4. Self-expression. The significance of the scores was found to be universal rather than dependent on occupation. It was also found that, for both occupations, the higher the degree of organizational climate favorability, the higher the Sense of Coherence, indicating a positive relationship between the two. Furthermore, it was found that the relationship was of the same degree regardless of occupation type.
These results suggest the importance of the organizational climate in maintaining and improving a Sense of Coherence as it is related to success or failure in stress coping.
