Investigating the Relationship between Organizational Climate and Service Performance: The Role of Work Passion and Leader-Member Exchange

This study aimed at examining the effect of organizational climate (Instrumental aspect of climate, Cognitive aspect of climate, and Emotional aspect of climate) on the service performance of employees of the hospitality industry in five regions of Ghana. 418 matched responses were received and used to test the hypotheses. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the data had a good model fit. Hierarchical multiple regression was employed to analyze the data. Findings of the survey revealed that the instrumental aspect of climate, cognitive aspect of climate, and emotional aspect of climate had a positive and significant effect on both work passion and service performance. Work passion partially mediated the relationship between the instrumental aspect of climate and service performance and the relationship between the cognitive aspect of climate and service performance. However, only the relationship between the cognitive aspect of climate and work passion was moderated by the leader-member exchange. Implications and recommendations for future studies are discussed.


Introduction
From a theoretical point of view, the thorough conceptualization of an organization by its employees denotes organizational climate (OC) That encapsulates the decision-making process and shares the meaning of employees' organizational environment (Schneider et al., 2017). However, Rivai et al. (2019) opine that the OC is the awareness of the organization's members and those who keep in contact with the company on what happens daily in the world or internally. This affects the employees' attitudes and behaviors, and the performance of organizational leaders that decide the organization's success. Instrumental, cognitive, and emotional climate as dimensions of OC promotes optimistic attitudes of employees to the work as they consider the organization's equal treatment (Huang et al., 2019). The climate in an organization depends on workers because organizations offer their customers services with intensive human resources (Ölçer & Florescu, 2015), hence, employee service performance (SP) very crucial.
Experiencing the right workplace climate makes employees relate well with each other, promoting SP. Therefore, SP considered in this study as a dependent variable indicates a direct connection to positive organizational efficiency, showing financial or non-financial results (Saleem et al., 2019). However, behaviors do not only yield SP but have implications known to be the source of physical and mental behaviors that vary from the outcomes (Tweedie et al., 2019). Consequently, this makes work passion (WP) as an employee's inherent behavior towards his/her performance very paramount in this context. Though SP is attainable with a favorable OC (Asril et al., 2019), it is also imperative to assess employees' behavior and attitude which mostly influence the passion towards work. Usually, WP is considered as a strong inclination towards an activity that people like and find important (Schulte-Holthaus, 2019; . Also, relationships between managers and subordinates are paramount when it comes to OC and SP nexus. For over three decades, managers and subordinate relationships have seen the light of detailed studies (Buch et al., 2019). However, Martin et al. (2016) confirmed some valuable outcomes attributable to engaging in high-quality leader-member exchange (LMX). Lately, LMX has been addressed as the inimitable relationship-grounded by social exchange among supervisors and subordinates (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Moreover, LMX is a concept that started as a substitute for regular leadership types (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). The theory of social exchange explains how two or more parties come to exchange resources, how successions of exchanges take place, and how exchanges affect the relationship between the involved parties (Cropanzano et al., 2017). The social exchange theory (SET) is used to underpin the relationships in this study since there is an exchange and reciprocity norm relationship among the used variables. SET stresses that relationships gradually evolve into trust, loyalty, and commitments needed if those interests are subject to explicit 'rules' of exchange (Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2005).
Recently, management activities such as leadership, workplace climate, and behaviors towards SP in the hospitality companies in Ghana have however weakened. This has led to underperformance since it has downplayed the incentive of the employees. Studies that sought to investigate these challenges have overlooked the mitigating effect of LMX and the mediating mechanism of WP for which this present study seeks to address this gap in the extant literature. Owing to this, the current study thus seeks to investigate: (i) the effects of the dimensions of OC on SP; (ii) whether WP can mediate the relationship between OC dimensions and SP; and (iii) whether LMX can moderate the relationship between OC dimensions and WP. Ali et al. (2018) defined organizational climate (OC) as a shared perception of what the organization is like in terms of practices, policies, procedures, routines, and rewards and expected behaviors found within organizational units. According to Chu & Chiu (2017), the following are ascribed as OC dimensions;

Organizational Climate and Service Performance
(1) Instrumental aspect: deals with the procedural way by which a task is to be completed, including extra reward. (2) Cognitive aspect: is the psychological involvement of an individual in the activities of the work to be performed. (3) Emotional aspect: depicts the social interpersonal relations that exist between an individual and others, such as cooperation, participation, and warmth & friendliness. It is noted that SP is a positive contribution to the organization's efficiency, which can be assessed by employees through various mechanisms (Mensah et  Signifying that, essentially, all employees want a pleasant climate in carrying out their work. Creating an enabling environment for individuals will encourage the creation of a conducive work environment that will instill SP for both customers and the organization. Also, Qiu et al. (2015) were of the view that OC does not represent stress on the organizational environment and the members' reasoning and attitudes. However, the outcome of employees' perception of the work environment on work motivation and SP has an additional impact on organizational performance. Universally, most scholars in this area of study found that the OC has a positive impact on the SP of employees. Thus, it is proposed that; H1: Organizational climate will significantly predict service performance. H1a: there is a significant relationship between the instrumental aspect of climate and service performance.
H1b: there is a significant relationship between the cognitive aspect of climate and service performance.
H1c: there is a significant relationship between the emotional aspect of climate and service performance

Mediating Role of Work Passion
Several scholars and reformers have elucidated OC diversely. Seemly, there is harmony on what constitutes OC. For instance, Litwin & Stringer (1968) as opined by Randhawa & Kaur (2015) assessed OC as "a set of measurable properties of the work environment, perceived directly or indirectly by the people who live and work in this environment and assumed to influence their motivation and behavior." Empirically, most studies have found it rarely linking WP to OC and SP relationship. However, for organizational well-being and SP level to be achieved, it is required that WP becomes crucial in addressing OC. According to  as opined by Gaan & Mohanty (2019) that passion is of two kinds i.e. harmonious passion which involves the independent and voluntary internalization in which the employee is spontaneously aligned to the job due to its importance but not social status or recognition and an obsessive passion which is viewed to be a forced internalization of the work, implying that employees observe their jobs as significant due to some social status outcomes devoted to the job. Moreover, the employee becomes obsessive when the job dictates the employee's emotions, which sometimes affects the other aspects of life in the form of career conflict. Hence, we proposed that: H2: Organizational climate will significantly influence employee work passion. H2a: There is a significant relationship between the instrumental aspect of climate and work passion H2b: There is a significant relationship between the cognitive aspect of climate and work passion H2c: There is a significant relationship between the emotional aspect of climate and work passion It has been very imperative to examine the relationship between WP and SP (Ahmed et al., 2016) as well as OC, of which contemporary researchers have delved into finding answers to the relationship. Burke et al. (2015) cross-cultural study in Russia and China found that harmonious and obsessive WP has an association with performance. These recent studies are a forward step in the utilization of passion in the organizational environment. Although researchers agree that both types of WP (harmonious and obsessive) may indeed affect SP, the notion that harmonious passion leads to solely positive outcomes, whereas obsessive passion as vice versa has not found consistent empirical support. However, though positive harmonious passion has an association with performance (Ahmed et al., 2016;Suarez et al., 2015), other studies view both as positive predictors of performance (Bonneville-Roussy et al., 2011; Ericsson et al., 1993). We, therefore, hypothesize that; H3: Work passion will play a mediating role in the relationship between organizational climate and service performance.
H3a: Work passion will mediate the relationship between an instrumental aspect of climate and service performance.
H3b: Work passion will mediate the relationship between the cognitive aspect of climate and service performance.
H3c: Work passion will mediate the relationship between the emotional aspect of climate and service performance.

The Moderating Role of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX)
Theoretically, social exchange theory has been the backbone for elucidating the LMX theory foundation (Bernerth et al., 2007;Dulebohn et al., 2012;Matta & Van Dyne, 2015). The theory of LMX leads us to go beyond cognitive explanations to also consider how the exchange relationship context may impact an employee's SP. Applying LMX increases work output and job satisfaction. Kuvaas & Buch (2018), posit that if a certain degree of interaction between managers and subordinates is warranted for WP, it is by applying the LMX. Further, to positively contribute to organizational level goals and objectives, LMX relationships have to be associated with higher levels of employees' WP. Empirically most studies have found it rarely linking LMX to WP. Moreover, the social exchange theory directs employees to go further in cognitive explanations and also to consider how the exchange relationship perspective influences an employee's WP. Besides, Martin et al. (2016) posit that employees' behavior is strongly influenced by the supportiveness of leaders, and stresses that leaders develop unique relationships with each of their followers and that the quality of this relationship affects followers' work attitudes and behavior. This portrays that the linkage that exists within the manager and the subordinate is governed by both concepts. Hence, we hypothesize that: H4: LMX will play a moderating role in the relationship between organizational climate and work passion.
H4a: LMX will moderate the relationship between the instrumental aspect of climate and Work passion.
H4b: LMX will moderate the relationship between the cognitive aspect of climate and Work passion. H4c: LMX will moderate the relationship between the emotional aspect of climate and Work passion.

Sample and Procedure
This present study examines the relationship between OC and SP as perceived by workers in the hospitality industry in Ghana. Letters were sent to the hotels and restaurant companies in 5 regions namely; Greater Accra, Ashanti, Western, Eastern, Central region of Ghana requesting their participation in the study. These regions were selected base on purposive sampling i.e. due to the number of hotels and restaurants located in these regions. Out of 38 companies, 35 granted our request making 3520 employees with each branch of the company having approximately 20 employees. An appointment was booked and meetings held with the participants and it was agreed that questionnaires would be given to the employees containing questions on employee's attitudes and behaviors towards their services to customers. Respondents were assured of confidentiality and some reward (pen and dairy) for recognition of participation. A selection condition was prepared to be followed in choosing employees across the 5 regions of Ghana. Employees were selected base on one being a worker for more than a year to guarantee that the employee is well involved in the climate of the company. The simple random sampling method was used to select representative samples from each hotel and restaurant. 605 questionnaires were then distributed using a simple random sampling technique. However, a total of 550 were retrieved with 418 as valid responses representing the sample size of this study. The data collection period was two months.

Measures
The main variables of this study are organizational climate (OC), service performance (SP), Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), and Work Passion (WP). The main dependent variable is SP. WP is a mediator in the relationship between OC and SP, while LMX moderates the direct effect of OC on WP. 5 point Likertscale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) was used to measure all items except SP that was measured with 6 points Likert scale ranging from (1 = very low to 6 = can't say). We measured organizational climate with a three-dimensional scale namely, Instrumental aspect of climate (IAC)

Results
In this present study, the descriptive statistics, and the correlations of the variables used for the survey, were analyzed first. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 23 was used to perform Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to ascertain items that loaded appropriately under their respective components. The authors relied on the factor loadings of the EFA results to further check the fitness of the model by applying Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) through AMOS (version 21) and the maximum likelihood method of estimation. Items deleted during the EFA process totaled 22 (24.72%) out of 81 items and did not affect the reliability, validity, and dimensionality of the measures. Hierarchical regression analysis was employed as the main statistical technique in SPSS (version 23) to estimate the path analysis. The procedures outlined by Baron and Kenny (1986) for performing mediation-moderation analysis were also followed. All alpha values for the scales of the constructs surpass the threshold 0.7. suggested by Nunnally (1978). A normed chi-square (X2/df) of 3 or less, SRMR of 0.08 or less, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) of 0.08 or less, Tucker-Lewis fit index (TLI) of 0.90 or higher and comparative fit index (CFI) of 0.90 or higher will indicate a great sign of unidimensionality for the data set (Byrne, 1994;Issac et al., 2006). The CFA was performed for all the 11 factors and a good model fit was yielded i.e.

Descriptive Statistics and inter-correlation
The statistics and inter-correlations for our variables are shown in Table 2

Data Analysis The direct effect of Organizational Climate on Work Passion and Service Performance
To test the mediating effect of WP, standardized regression analysis was employed to test the generative effect of the mediation method. Baron and Kenny (1986) 3-step approach was followed. (1) The independent variable significantly predicts the dependent variable, (2) the independent variable significantly predicts the mediator, (3) when the dependent variable is regressed on both variables (the independent variable and the mediator), and the mediator significantly predicts the dependent variable while the predictive utility of the independent variable is reduced. If both the mediator and independent variables are significant in this regression, there is partial mediation. Moreover, if the mediator is significant but the independent variable is not significant in this regression, there is full mediation.
From Table 3, the results showed that the IAC had a direct positive and significant effect on SP yielding β=0.434 (t=9.239, p<0.001), hence H1a is supported. Also, IAC again predicted WP resulting in β=0.377 (t= 7.989, p<0.001), therefore H2a is supported. However, when SP was regressed on both IAC and WP, standardized regression estimates for IAC β=0.390 with p< 0.001 and WP β=0.117 with p<0.01 indicating a partial mediation, hence, H3a is supported. Moreover, the CAC had a direct positive and significant effect on SP (β) = 0.149 (t=2.992, p<0.001), hence H1b is supported. CAC again positively predicted WP (β) = 0.082(t=1.656, p<0.1), hence providing support for H2b. When the SP was regressed on both CAC and WP, a standardized regression estimate for CAC β=0.129 (t=2.658, p< 0.05) and a standardized coefficient estimate for WP β=0.245 (t=5.068, p<0.001) were recorded, hence, WP partially mediated the relationship, therefore, H3b is supported. Furthermore, in table 3, the EAC also had a direct positive and significant effect on SP β = 0.157(t=3.227, p<0.05), hence, H1c is supported. However, EAC could not directly predict WP (β) = 0.074 (t= 1.544, p>0.05), hence H2c is not supported. Surprisingly, when SP was regressed on both EAC and WP, standardized regression estimates for EAC β=0.138 with p< 0.01 and WP β=0.245 with p<0.001, EAC failed to directly and statistically predict WP, hence H3c was not supported. Table 3. Mediating effect of Work passion on the relationship between dimensions of organizational climate and Service performance Note: a.R 2 =adjusted R 2 ; Standardized coefficient of regression= β; Instrumental aspect organizational climate=IAC; Cognitive aspect of organizational climate= CAC; Emotional aspect of organizational climate = EAC; Work Passion=WP; Service Performance=SP; ***=Sig. at 0.001; **=Sig. at 0.01; *=Sig.at 0.05

Moderating effect of LMX on the relationship between dimensions of organizational climate and work passion
Applying hierarchical regression analysis, the moderated relationships were estimated. The results are set out in Table, 5a, 5b, and, 5c. First, the findings in table 5a revealed that IAC still exerted a positive and significant effect on WP, providing additional support for H2a. However, maintaining IAC as the independent variable, the moderating effect of LMX is presented in Table 5a. The interaction term between IAC and LMX is negative and not statistically significant. Hence, no moderation effect, therefore, H4a was not supported. In Table 5b, it is indicated in the results that the CAC influence on WP was not statistically significant in model 2. However, in model 3 the product interaction term between EAC and LMX was positive and statistically significant indicating there was a moderation effect on the relationship between CAC and WP. Hence, H4b was supported. Also, in Table 5c, EAC's influence on WP was not statistically significant in model 2, however, LMX had a positive and significant influence on WP in model 2. In testing for the moderation effect, the interaction term between EAC and LMX was negative and statistically not significant depicting that there was no moderation effect on the relationship between EAC and WP in model 3. Hence, H4c was not supported.  Note: *p<0.05; ***p<0.001.

Discussions and conclusions
This study aimed at examining how OC dimensions (IAC, CAC, and EAC) promotes SP. The findings indicate that IAC, CAC, and EAC positively and significantly influenced SP directly. Moreover, WP partially mediated the relationship between IAC and SP. Also, WP partially mediated the relationship between CAC and SP. However, WP was not statistically significant in the relationship between EAC and SP. Furthermore, LMX was used to moderate the relationship between IAC, CAC, and EAC and SP. The main relationship of the findings supports the work of Kang et al. (2016) who indicated in their research that elements of organizational climate, job characteristics, and other antecedents of work performance may mainly influence individual behavior and performance through work passion. The outcomes of this current study also support the assertion made by Neal et al. (2000) that organizational climate directly influences performance.
The findings showed that LMX significantly affected the relationship between CAC and WP, indicating the moderation effect. This happens due to the satisfactory leader-member relationship activities such as support, loyalty, and trust that projects how well employees perceive that supervisors relate cordially with them which increases their love and affection for the work they do. Undeniably, employees usually assume that supervisors are leaders of the organization who upholds the organization's aims and directs employees' actions as a reflection of the organization (Eisenberger et al., 2002), even though LMX could not have a discernible moderating effect on both IAC and EAC. CAC deals with the psychological participation of the employees in the course of the work to be done. This promotes innovative contributions by the employee and rapport between the supervisor and the employee which leads to employees being passionate about their job and having a sense of belongingness. This will strengthen the WP of the employees as influenced by LMX. Also, exhibiting a high level of independence in achieving goals limits unwarranted intervention and interference of managers. A high level of autonomy mostly reduces this interference and promotes LMX relationships in organizations. This improves WP since it brings about a favorable climate workplace. It is identified in previous studies that employees with more favorable attitudes had a strong positive relationship with outcome variables as compared to those with unfavorable attitudes (Cannon, Herda, & Puffer, 2019). For example, employees' attitudes are to be assessed by their work passion towards their assigned job and role in an organization (Permarupan et al., 2013). Also, Audenaert et al. (2019) found a positive correlation between LMX and how employees perform their tasks.

Practical Implication
The study also has some implications for practice. Firstly, the findings indicate that only the relationship between CAC and SP was mediated by LMX. Therefore, organizations should promote LMX within the organization. Any policy that destroys the supervisor-employee relationship should not be encouraged. Secondly, when employees contribute immensely by introducing innovative ideas into the organization, they become proud and improve their passion for work. This in effect makes employees highly innovative. Organizations should map strategies to invest many resources and motivate employees to become innovative in detailing their job. Thirdly, the demographics highlight that the majority of the staff has senior high school qualification which presupposes that they lack high education. We recommend that organizations should have standardized recruitment, selection, and training program that attracts highly skilled and competent staff for their services.

Limitations and suggestions for future studies
As the case in similar studies, our study also has some limitations. To begin, IAC, CAC, and EAC were the only dimensions considered to examine the effect of OC on WP and SP. Other aspects of OC such as work clarity, standard, responsibilities, and opportunity for career development, to mention but a few should also be considered in future studies as they may influence SP. Again, the estimator employed for the path analysis was hierarchical regression, conversely, future studies may consider the structural equation model. The study made use of employees in responding to the questionnaire used to gather data, however, future researchers should consider the use of customers as respondents in similar studies.