Publicness in Policy Environments: A Multilevel Analysis of Substance Abuse Treatment Services

Abstract

Building on the publicness, organizational theory, and policy diffusion literatures, we describe and evaluate the relationships between organizational and two distinct types of environmental publicness and organizational practices. Through hierarchical linear modeling, we integrate organizational-level data on substance abuse treatment centers participating in the National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services in the year 2009, with data on the larger substance abuse policy environment at the state level to predict whether organizations offer public service practices. Our findings indicate that publicness at the organizational and state policy levels are both important determinants of the offering of public service practices. Generally, we find that privately owned organizations are more likely to offer these services when they operate in policy environments with greater publicness. However, we also find that private organizations are less likely to offer public services that result in clear economic loss if they operate in policy environments with a greater number of public organizations.