Organizational Social Context Research Articles

Assessing the Organizational Social Context (OSC) of Mental Health Services: Implications for Research and Practice

The organizational social context in which mental health services are provided is believed to affect the adoption and implementation of evidence-based practices (EBPs) as well as the quality and outcomes of the services. A fully developed science of implementation effectiveness requires conceptual models that include organizational social context and tools for assessing social context that have been tested in a broad cross-section of mental health systems. This paper describes the role of organizational social context in services and implementation research and evaluates a comprehensive contextual measure, labeled Organizational Social Context (OSC), designed to assess the key latent constructs of culture, climate and work attitudes. The psychometric properties of the OSC measure were assessed in a nationwide study of 1,154 clinicians in 100 mental health clinics with a second-order confirmatory factor analysis of clinician responses, estimates of scale reliabilities, and indices of within-clinic agreement and between-clinic differences among clinicians. Finally, the paper illustrates the use of nationwide norms in describing the OSC profiles of individual mental health clinics and examines the cross-level association of organizational-level culture and climate with clinician-level work attitudes.

Assessing Distributive Justice in Marketing: A Benefit-Cost Approach

Distributive justice, the fair apportioning of benefits and costs, is a social performance criterion in marketing and in organizational and other social contexts. In determining what is more or less just or fair, conflicts arise because of differing perspectives. Benefit-cost analysis offers an appropriate framework and method for evaluating and resolving these conflicts. This article examines several macromarketing issues, and policy alternatives are identified and evaluated. Some correctives that intuitively promise better outcomes, after more careful analysis, may not be more just. However, the principal contribution here is to demonstrate how the lens of benefit-cost analysis can aid in assessing both existing inequities and the effects of interventions intended to correct them. Finally, the limitations and implications of this approach to addressing this aspect of market performance are discussed.

Therapist Turnover and New Program Sustainability in Mental Health Clinics as a Function of Organizational Culture, Climate, and Service Structure

The present study incorporates organizational theory and organizational characteristics in examining issues related to the successful implementation of mental health services. Following the theoretical foundations of socio-technical and cultural models of organizational effectiveness, organizational climate, culture, legal and service structures, and workforce characteristics are examined as correlates of therapist turnover and new program sustainability in a nationwide sample of mental health clinics. Results of General Linear Modeling (GLM) with the organization as the unit of analysis revealed that organizations with the best climates as measured by the Organizational Social Context (OSC) profiling system, had annual turnover rates (10%) that were less than half the rates found in organizations with the worst climates (22%). In addition, organizations with the best culture profiles sustained new treatment or service programs over twice as long (50 vs. 24 months) as organizations with the worst cultures. Finally, clinics with separate children's services units had higher turnover rates than clinics that served adults and children within the same unit. The findings suggest that strategies to support the implementation of new mental health treatments and services should attend to organizational culture and climate, and to the compatibility of organizational service structures with the demand characteristics of treatments.

Assessing and Changing Organizational Culture and Climate for Effective Services

The 2007 Aaron Rosen Lecture was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Social Work and Research, January 12, 2007, in San Francisco, CA. The lecture begins by describing the gap between what is known about efficacious treatments and other evidence-based practices on the one hand and the services that are provided in actual community-based practice settings on the other. To address this gap, the lecture calls for the development of a science of implementation effectiveness and describes the author's research on assessing and changing the social context of mental health and social service organizations as contributing to that effort. The findings of two national studies and one controlled clinical trial are summarized to (a) link organizational social context to service outcomes, (b) describe a new profiling system for assessing organizational social context, and (c) demonstrate how social context can be changed with planned organizational intervention strategies.

Organizational Culture and Climate: Implications for Services and Interventions Research.

Efforts to disseminate and implement evidence-based practices (EBPs) in children's mental health service and other human service systems have had limited success. There is evidence that this limited success is in part a function of the characteristics of the human service organizations that provide the services. Human service organizations create a social context for the services they provide, and this context affects the quality and outcomes of the services in a variety of ways. A half century of research in a variety of organizations provides evidence that an organization's social context affects whether new core technologies (of which EBPs are an example) are adopted, how they are implemented, and whether they are sustained and effective. This article defines two dimensions of an organization's social context, climate and culture, that have been shown to be particularly important to human service quality and outcomes and reviews current organizational research to identify the potential mechanisms through which climate and culture influence the adoption and implementation of EBPs in mental health. A variety of organizational research methodologies are also suggested for integrating organizational culture and climate into services and interventions research.

Freshman Year Dropouts: Interactions Between Student and School Characteristics and Student Dropout Status

Data from a large school district in the southwestern United States were analyzed to investigate relations between student and school characteristics and high school freshman dropout patterns. Application of a multilevel logistic regression model to student dropout data revealed evidence of school-to-school differences in student dropout rates and school-to-school differences in the relation between student characteristics and student dropout status. Investigation of the school differences revealed that school organization and schools' social context were statistically significant predictors of several of the dropout outcomes. Evidence of school context and school practice effects on student dropout outcomes suggests that school personnel may need to consider how characteristics of the school environment interact with the background characteristics of students when developing and focusing dropout prevention strategies. Implications for school policy and practice are discussed.