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Trice, Harrison M.; Sonnenstuhl, William J.
doi: 10.1177/002188638802400403pmid: N/A
This article presents a review of the literature addressing employees' alcohol abuse and dependence. Based on this review, the authors identify four perspectives adopted by social scientists studying drinking behavior and the work place. The work culture perspective postulates that administrative and occupational subcultures establish norms for alcohol use. The social control perspective postulates that an organization's disciplinary structure may either inhibit or create opportunities for the development of drinking problems. The alienation perspective and the work stress perspective postulate that various work place conditions (e.g., boring tasks, work overload) cause distress, which employees may seek to relieve with alcohol. The authors recommend that these four perspectives guide future research and current efforts to reduce risk factors in the work place that are associated with drinking behavior.
doi: 10.1177/002188638802400404pmid: N/A
Numerous programs addressing employee alcohol abuse and dependence have appeared in organizations in the U.S. since the 1940s. Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) have effectively used a dual strategy of constructive confrontation and counseling for dealing with problem drinkers at the work site. In many organizations, however, practitioners have begun to treat problem drinkers by altering this strategy and/or relying on health promotion programs (HPPs) and quality of work life (QWL) efforts. This article compares EAPs, HPPs, and QWL, discussing their theoretical underpinnings, methods, and demonstrated effectiveness in treating alcohol abuse and dependence. The author encourages cooperation among EAP, HPP, and QWL practitioners in addressing work place factors related to drinking problems, and makes several recommendations for future research.
doi: 10.1177/002188638802400405pmid: N/A
This article describes how practitioners in employee assistance programs (EAPs) can adopt the role of constructive broker to achieve the goal of providing humane treatment to troubled workers. The context in which EAPs operate is discussed in terms of the labor process model, which holds that inherent ideological conflicts between management and labor make the work place a contentious environment. The author presents strategies constructive brokers employ for enacting the role, and issues related to cost containment, role definition, and professionalism that affect EAPs today. Effective constructive brokers must constantly remain aware of the role they play, their status relative to others in the network, and their original goals. The author concludes that if employee assistance practitioners do not adopt the constructive broker role, their EAPs will likely become absorbed into other organization units, which would make them less capable of fulfilling their humanitarian ideals.
Sonnenstuhl, William J.; Staudenmeier, William J.; Trice, Harrison M.
doi: 10.1177/002188638802400406pmid: N/A
Practitioners tend to employ cultural referral categories when classifying what has motivated clients to enter employee assistance programs (EAPs). These categories are rooted in ideology and used in ways that often conceal the diverse factors leading troubled employees to seek help. In particular, application of the term “self-referral” has grown dramatically while application of the term “supervisory referral” has declined, which may reflect practitioners' underlying beliefs about how employees ought to use EAPs. The article discusses some studies of alcohol treatment efforts for which the use of cultural referral categories made interpretation of the findings difficult. Following a review of the medical and psychiatric literaure on seeking help, the authors call for construction of a grounded theory based on qualitative research, and recommend that EAPs develop more accurate classifications for labeling cases.
Blum, Terry C.; Roman, Paul M.
doi: 10.1177/002188638802400407pmid: N/A
Employee assistance programs (EAPs) have diffused rapidly, but few studies have examined the processes of this diffusion, and most of these have focused on the characteristics of the organizations adopting EAPs. This article addresses the “purveyor organizations ” that market EAPs to others. The authors hypothesized that the greater the purveyor organization's integration of and managerial control over its subunit for EAP service delivery, the more supportive relationships the purveyor organization has with treatment organizations within its community, and that the higher its level of sociopolitical acceptability, the more successful it will be in encouraging organizations adopting EAPs to implement them fully. Using survey data from 724 occupational program consultants from purveyor organizations, the authors conducted a multivariate analysis. Their findings support the hypotheses that these features of purveyor organizations affect the extent to which EAPs are implemented, with managerial control over the EAP subunit accounting for the most variance.
Bayer, Gregory; Gerstein, Lawrence
doi: 10.1177/002188638802400408pmid: N/A
To address the shortage of instruments related to employee assistance programs (EAPs), the Behavioral Index of Troubled Employees (BITE) was developed. This focuses on one aspect of the supervisor-troubled worker intervention process: supervisors' attitudes toward behaviors of impaired employees. As such, the BITE gathers information on supervisors' opinions of various behaviors associated with troubled workers. In a study of the instrument, the BITE was administered to 237 supervisors from two companies in the automotive industry. The underlying structure and pattern of the supervisors' attitudes was determined through the use of principle components factor analytic and reliability procedures. The results suggest that the BITE comprises four valid, reliable factors: industriousness, resistance, acrimoniousness, and disaffection. The authors discuss the implications of using the BITE in future research, theory testing, and training supervisors about EAP practices.
Harris, Michael M.; Fennell, Mary L.
doi: 10.1177/002188638802400409pmid: N/A
Little empirical research has examined employees' perceptions of employee assistance programs (EAPs) and their willingness to participate in them. A sample of 150 employees of a white collar firm was surveyed to determine the responden' attitudes, perceptions, and willingness to use various resources for help with alcohol abuse and dependence, their beliefs about the causes and stigma of alcoholism and reasons for drinking, and their levels of alcohol consumption. The results indicate that men and women appear equally willing to use EAPs, although they differ somewhat in their perceptions of and attitudes toward them. The authors also found that willingness to obtain help from an EAP was greatly influenced by a respondent's familiarity with the program, perceptions of its trustworthiness and opportunities for personal attention, level of alcohol consumption, and beliefs about drinking to reduce job-related stress.
doi: 10.1177/002188638802400410pmid: N/A
In response to the use of alcohol and other drugs in the work place, policy decisions with significant social and legal implications—such as urine testing for drug use—are being made without a clear understanding of either the epidemiology or etiology of this phenomenon. This article presents the major theoretical perspectives on employees' substance abuse and assesses the desirability of integrating them. Using data from an anonymous mail survey of 9,175 employees of 47 organizations in three industries, the author analyzed responses to items addressing age, gender, social interaction with coworkers, and satisfaction with one's job to determine any relationship between these variables and self-reported instances of working while intoxicated. The findings indicate that the employees most likely to work under the influence of alcohol or other drugs were men younger than 30 years, and that the likelihood of their—or other employees'—doing so increased when they felt unhappy about their jobs and socialized frequently with coworkers off the job. The author discusses the implications of these findings for both deviance theory and policies for employee assistance programs.
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