ORGANISATIONAL FINANCING
AND
ORGANISATIONAL CLIMATE
WELCOME
Welcome to the home page for my first PhD research study investigating how organisational financing can impact upon individual psychology. This is the first of many studies and is designed to investigate how organisational climate mediates the relationship between organisational financing and individual psychology, whilst considering moderator mechanism such as financial knowledge, financing exposure and financial power.
The above contains a lot of complicated words, so I want to take a couple of paragraphs to explain 'Why?', 'How?' and 'What?' I'm doing and should you be interested, how you and your organisation could be involved in this research process.
WHY?
Recent studies have highlighted that employee burnout has worsened throughout the Covid-19 pandemic with over half of the population feeling 'burned out', driven by longer working hours and an inability to unplug from work. Burnout, stress and other mental-ill health conditions are all interconnected and need to be considered together. Individual's and their psychology are struggling!
Finance is the foundation of many organisations and is one of the primary mechanisms by which they interact with the internal and external environment. Finance is used in almost all decision making and under Schein's definition, can be considered both a primary and secondary culture embedding mechanism.
Organisations shape the experiences, attitudes and behaviours of their employees. The reciprocal relationship between organisation and individual is constantly evolving and understanding how different parts of an organisation can affect and individual could allow us to build healthier organisations for both the company and the individual.
HOW?
By background I'm a mathematician and an accountant so I am approaching this study through quantitative research methods. This means I'll be looking for trends in data across large sample populations. Quantitative research allows us to consider correlation and causation, but often doesn't allow us the nuance of relationships as qualitative research does (which will be considered in future studies).
I will be using an online questionnaire to ask participants questions about their perceptions of their organisation. The use of the term perception is important here because sometimes perception differs from reality. What people perceive isn't always what is present similar to what was uncovered through my Broken the Stigma research.
Should you choose to participate, you'll notice most questions are Likert rating scales, which allows me to assess differences numerically and identify 'statistical significance'. You will also notice that I have utilised the Competing Values Framework (a tried and tested framework originally developed to consider culture) to consider different ways finance teams can operate. This allows me to categorise similar perceptions of finance teams within organisations to see how those can lead to different individual outcomes.
WHAT?
Should you choose to participate you'll first be asked some questions about yourself and the organisation where you currently work. Please note that anonymity and confidentiality are paramount to us as researchers and you will only be identifiable by a Participant ID Number which you will be provided. You, nor your organisation, will be identifiable and only summary information after data analysis will be discussed.
You will then be asked questions relating to Organisational Climate (perceptions of aspects of your organisation) from existing studies that have considering climate in line with the Competing Values Framework. You will then be asked a series of questions about your levels of stress, burnout, job insecurity and job satisfaction. All these measures have been used in many research studies previously.
Then my job begins analysing all this data. I won't be going into the details, but my intention is to use Structural Equation Modelling to see whether it is possible to predict individual psychological outcomes based on the financing within the organisation. I am considering Organisational Climate as a mediator mechanism and will be consider constructs such as 'financial knowledge' as moderator mechanisms.
PARTICIPATION
If you're interested in taking part in this research it's fairly straight forward.
PARTICIPANT
Share your insight alongside hundreds of others
Clicking on the link below will open the research study website in a new window. It is expected that taking the study will take about 15 minutes of your time. You will be guided through the questionnaire and full information will be available on the Information Page are the start.
ORGANISATION
Receive insight on your organisation
If you are interested in taking part as an organisation, or as a team within an organisation, it is possible for me to create a bespoke link which will separate your data allowing the creation of an organisation case study. Summary level results and insights can be provided back to you and your organisation. Clicking on the link below will open a contact form to e-mail me directly to start this process.
This research is part of my PhD Research Studies at Leeds Beckett University. All work is conducted in line with the BPS Code of Ethics. My Director of Studies and Research Supervisor is Dr Chanki Moon. If you have any questions with regards to this research please do not hesitate to contact either of us.
BACKGROUND AND REFERENCES
If you're interested in reading more about this research project or understanding some more of the background to this project as well as some more detail around the various constructs such as Organisational Climate or the Competing Values Framework, I have included the background section of my Confirmation of Registration document below. It's not written in my usually conversational style, so may not be as readily accessible as some of my writing, but hopefully it'll give you a bit of the detail as well as providing a list of my references and sources that support my research. Clearly things change with time, but the link at the bottom of this page will give you some background into what I am studying and why.
OPEN SCIENCE FRAMEWORK
The Open Science Framework is a tool for sharing your research design, methodology and results with the aim of enhancing the openness, integrity and reproducibility of research. My full research project and all the work associated with my PhD will be publicly available on OSF upon completion of the PhD. If you would like to know anything in more detail, please feel free to e-mail me directly.