Climate and organizational performance in long‐term care facilities: The role of affective commitment

Organizational climate represents the shared perceptions that employees have about their experiences at work. A persistent goal of the literature has been to relate organizational climate to organizational outcomes. Yet, potential mediating mechanisms of those relationships remain underexplored. This study addresses this shortcoming by exploring the mediating role of affective organizational commitment in the relationship between a climate for nursing and organizational performance. Our data included responses from a sample of 268 nurses working in 28 long‐term care facilities and multiple years of government ratings of the quality of care provided by each of those facilities. Using multilevel structural equation modelling, we found that the nurses’ affective commitment mediated the relationship between nursing climate and quality care provided both concurrently (in the same year as the data were collected) and predictively (one year later). We also found that the mediational process predicts unique variance in the lagged assessment of quality of care provided that is not accounted for by the previous year's performance. This suggests the influence of climate on affective commitment and, consequently, organizational performance may take time to become apparent. Implications for the roles of climate and affective commitment on organizational performance are discussed. Practitioner points Our results suggest that creating a beneficial nursing climate may help organizations foster positive job attitudes, such as organizational commitment. Creating a positive climate, like a nursing climate, and fostering job attitudes among employees, such as organizational commitment, are associated with organizational performance benefits. The implications of a climate may not be fully realized immediately; organizational leaders driving initiatives to create a positive climate should expect it will take some time to realize benefits on organizational performance indicators.