| The purpose of this study was to examine the current climate for creativity and change at the Army Materiel Command (AMC), using the nine organizational climate dimensions of the Situational Outlook Questionnaire(TM) (SOQ), and to compare the results with those of other organizations to determine where AMC stands relative to innovative, average, or stagnated organizations. The SOQ, which includes 53-items and 3 narrative questions, measures people's perception of an organization's context for change. The questionnaire addresses: challenge and involvement, freedom, trust and openness, idea time, playfulness/humor, conflicts, idea support, debates, and risk-taking . Additionally, this study was concerned with the influences that age, gender, education, experience at AMC, and experience in the present position may have on perceptions of the organization's climate. Data were collected from 76 respondents or 39.8% of the 191 randomly selected personnel. The results of the analysis indicated that AMC was consistently in the stagnated category in each of the nine climate dimensions. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) did not reveal a significant difference in the climate for creativity as it applied to age, gender, and experience in the present position. However, there were significant differences noted in educational status and experience at AMC. The significant difference between climate and education specifically dealt with the Conflicts dimension. Further investigation revealed that as the educational level of participants increased so did the scores for the Conflicts dimension. This indicated that there was a direct correlation between the educational level of participants and their degree of personal and emotional tension within the organization. |
