The measurement and interpretation of organizational climate

This study describes the development and application of a new organizational climate instrument, the Survey of Organizational Characteristics (SOC). The participants in the development phase were 94 master's of business administration students, and the participants in the validation phase were 77 medical professionals: 24 medical faculty, 17 postdoctoral students, and 36 medical technicians. The final instrument consisted of 8 relatively independent scales with alpha coefficients based on the combined sample ranging from .77 to .98, and with 6 coefficients that were higher than .90. Validity hypotheses based on a priori knowledge about the 3 medical groups were for the most part well substantiated, although the small sample of postdoctoral students was a limitation. In relation to the findings, an attempt was made to clarify and perhaps narrow several of the conceptual and methodological gaps that persist between organizational climate and organizational culture.     

Pictorial depth interpretation: A prerequisite to pictorial space comprehension

One hundred and seventy-two perceptually untrained Grade 3 Shona school children, urban and rural, were presented with, and tested orally on, six pictures containing structured depth cues. Eighty per cent of the children achieved consistent (6/6) pictorial depth interpretation (p.d.i.) in response to the oral instruments, whereas only 69% mean p.d.i. had been attained by Grade 2 & 4 children in response to the non-verbal instruments of Jahoda and McGurk (1974). Of the 24% of the children who achieved consistent pictorial space comprehension (p.s.c.) all but two (less than 5%) were also capable of p.d.i. To establish that p.s.c. is preceded by p.d.i., and does not occur simultaneously with it, 86 children, trained perceptually for pictorial depth, were similarly tested. Of the 26% gain in consistent p.s.c., almost half occurred amongst children necessarily already capable of p.d.i. Further, it was noted that the inhibition of p.d.i., like that of p.s.c. (Leach, 1975, 1977), resulting from excessively abstract line drawings, was reduced by the use of more realistic materials such as photographs.     

A measurement of the process of adolescence: standardization and interpretation

The Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status (Adams, Shea, & Fitch, 1979) was administered to 350 adolescents (12 to 18 years old) to test the Eriksonian theory of a developmental continuum from role diffusion to identity achievement. The results offer construct validity for the dynamic process proposed by Blos and Erikson, but do not support the categorization procedure as set forth by Adams, Shea, and Fitch. The OMEIS questionnaire lends itself to a qualitative and dynamic interpretation rather than to a quantitative and normative approach. It is suggested that the dynamic interpretation is more sensitive to the psychological reality of the developmental process.     

The dynamics of interpretation

The patient's productions are a dynamic record of the conflicts of the past as they are recapitulated and re-experienced in the present. Much can be learned by closely studying the immediate effect of the analyst's interventions. Interpretation, especially of transference phenomena, will upset the equilibrium which has been effected and will enable the patient to understand how unconscious fantasies from the past continue to influence his perception and reactions in the present. Interpretation is a continuing process, unfolding in logical sequence. Transference may be an expression of the patient's resistance to recognizing an unconscious wish toward the original object.     

The act of interpretation1

The author understands the interpreting act as an attempt to perceive what happens in the transference/countertransference fi eld and not just what happens in the patient's mind. Interpretation transcends mere intellectual communication. It is also an experience in which analysts’ emotions work as an important instrument in understanding their patients. Interpretation is seen to possess manifest as well as latent content; the latter would contain the analysts’ feelings, emotions and personality. The unconscious content of an interpretation does not inconvenience or preclude the development of the analytic process, but, on the contrary, it allows new associative material to emerge, and it transforms the analytic session into a human relationship. Analysts’ awareness of this content derived from patients’ apperceptions is a signifi cant instrument for understanding what is happening in the analytic relationship, and what transpires in these sessions provides fundamental elements for analysts’ self‐analysis. Some clinical examples demonstrate these occurrences in analytic sessions, and how they can be apprehended and used for a better understanding of the patient. The author also mentions the occurrence of diffi culties during the analytic process. These diffi culties are often the result of lapses in an analyst's perception related to unconscious elements of the relationship.     

The visual contour in depth

We asked subjects to match points on the surface of a smooth three-dimensional (3-D) shape with points on the surface of another object that was geometrically identical to the first object but was placed in a different pose, was differently textured, and was differently shaded. In all cases, the fiducial point was on the rim of one of the objects (i.e., the boundary of the visible region of the surface), whereas the matching point was well within the silhouette of the other object. This allowed us to draw (preliminary) conclusions concerning the way monocular human observers are able to handle the neighborhood of the rim, where the local slant assumes arbitrarily high values. All experiments were done in real space with real objects (no computer-simulated scenes), the points being indicated with laser beam illumination. The subject was given control over the direction of the laser beams and was thus able to perform the task by adjustment from the vantage position. We studied both consistency (whether the subject’s judgments were invariant against changes of relative pose) and veridicality (whether the depth of the visual contour as calculated from the settings agreed with the true distance as measured by mechanical means). Subjects caught much of the 3-D structure of the contour but did deviate appreciably and apparently idiosyncratically from the true geometry.