Level of analysis issues in assessing treatment beliefs in substance abuse clinics.

The current study applies the growing literature in the organizational sciences regarding levels of analysis issues to the analysis of substance abuse treatment beliefs. Research on clinicians' beliefs in substance abuse treatment is often based on the assumption that the beliefs are sufficiently shared by clinicians within a clinic and sufficiently vary across clinics that they can be treated as a group-level phenomenon. Further, efforts to introduce new innovations are often focused at the group or clinic level without testing this assumption, which can lead to failure to adopt or to successfully implement the innovation. We tested the assumption of sharedness by examining if there was sufficient agreement about treatment beliefs within clinics, within groups of clinics or within groups of clinicians to justify treating these aggregations as meaningful groups. Using three statistical approaches to examining level of analysis (Within and Between Analysis (WABA I), Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC(1)), and r(wg)), we found that variability in treatment beliefs largely occurred at the individual rather than at the tested aggregate levels of analysis. These findings serve as an example of the importance of testing the assumption of shared perceptions in future research.

When organizational climate is unambiguous, it is also strong.

Several recent studies have addressed the topic of climate strength--the degree to which there is agreement among an organization's members regarding the practices and policies as well as the shared values that characterize the organization. To further investigate antecedents of climate strength, the authors used data from the GLOBE Project, totaling 3,783 individuals from 123 organizations. The authors hypothesized that they would find greater climate strength in organizations with climates reflecting mechanistic as opposed to organic organizational forms. Although the authors did in fact find such a trend, they also unexpectedly uncovered significant and strong nonlinear effects, such that climates that are clearly mechanistic or clearly organic have strong climates, with weaker climates emerging for organizations with more ambiguous climates. These findings provide interesting new avenues to pursue in understanding the origins of climate strength.

Embedding leader characteristics: an examination of homogeneity of personality and values in organizations.

The authors (a) investigated trait homogeneity in organizations by examining within-organization similarity among members' personality traits and personal values and (b) tested the relationship between the top leaders' personal characteristics and organizational profiles of personality and values. Results replicate and extend B. Schneider, D. B. Smith, S. Taylor, and J. Fleenor's (1998) hypothesis of the homogeneity of personality in organizations. Using data from CEOs and 467 employee participants from 32 organizations, the authors found evidence of within-organization homogeneity of both personality and values. Results also suggest initial empirical support for assumptions presented by E. Schein (1992) and B. Schneider (1987) about leader-follower congruence. Some implications regarding leadership and organizational behavior are discussed.

Clinicians' information sources for new substance abuse treatment.

Little is known about clinicians' information sources for new treatments or ways to improve dissemination of that information. We analyzed 163 clinicians' responses to a checklist of where and how frequently they obtain information on new treatment approaches. They reported at least yearly use of a median of four cosmopolite categories (e.g., journals or books, Internet) and a median of three local categories (e.g., co-workers, personal experience) with interpersonal contact with co-workers (89%) and seminars/conferences (86%) being the most frequently endorsed responses for at least yearly use. In response to the hypothetical scenario of receiving monthly e-mail summaries of journal articles, 59% of the clinicians rated the strategy as "very helpful". If continuing education credits were offered, more clinicians (from 50-80%) would read the relevant articles. Information dissemination may improve with expanded Internet access at programs and short e-mailed summaries carrying links to full articles coupled with the incentive of earning continuing education credits.