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

TLDR

Dissemination of evidence‑based practices in children’s mental health and other human service systems has been limited, and research shows that an organization’s social context—its culture and climate—affects adoption, implementation, and sustainability of such practices. This article defines the dimensions of organizational climate and culture and reviews research to identify how they influence the adoption and implementation of evidence‑based practices in mental health. The authors review mechanisms linking climate and culture to EBP adoption and propose organizational research methods for integrating these dimensions into services and interventions research. Evidence indicates that the limited success of EBP implementation is partly due to characteristics of the human service organizations that deliver the services.

Abstract

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.