Entropic organizational climate (EOC): Development and validation of new scale

Abstract

Entropy, which is an element of the system approach evaluating organizations as a system, refers to the deterioration tendency. Purpose. This study aimed to develop a new scale in order to evaluate the negative climate in organizations. Method. The study was carried out in two stages. In the first study, the construct validity of the scale (N = 412) was revealed by exploratory factor analysis and, also convergent and discriminant analysis in the banking sector. The second study was carried out in the teacher sample (N = 224) and analysed for confirmatory factor analysis and predictive validity of the scale. Findings. The Entropic Organizational Climate (EOC) Scale emerged as a two-dimensional structure. Considering the relevant opinions in the literature, the EFA and also convergent and discriminant validity analysis results show that the entropic organizational climate scale has a strong construct validity. Processual entropy makes a negative contribution to predicting job engagement and relational entropy makes a positive contribution to predicting intention for leaving the job. These findings indicate that the entropic organizational climate scale has a predictive validity. The reliability analyses both study 1 and study 2 indicate that the inter-item consistency of the entropic organizational climate scale is reliable as Cronbach's alpha coefficients provide a threshold equal to alpha >=.70, and the composite reliability coefficients provide a threshold equal to CR >=.70. All these findings indicate that the EOC scale can be used for similar psychometric measurements. The dimensions of the scale were named as Relational entropy and Processual entropy. Implications for practice. This scale is a valid and reliable instrument to measure entropic climate in organizations.