Autopsy of a failure: Evaluating process and contextual issues in an organizational-level work stress intervention.

Abstract

The difficulties associated with the evaluation of organizational-level work stress interventions are notorious yet little attention has been paid to the reasons why they fail. This case study took place in a department of 205 employees from a private company where an intervention was developed but poorly implemented. This paper scrutinizes the intervention to understand why it was poorly implemented and examine its effects on employees. Qualitative data (field notes and interviews with managers) was used to evaluate the intervention. Questionnaires (n ϭ 125, n ϭ 94, 60 full-completers) were used to evaluate the level of implementation and its effects. Results suggest partial implementation might have a detrimental effect on commitment. Poor implementation could be accounted for by the changing organizational context, low ownership of stakeholders, and flaws in the intervention design. Considering the process and context of interventions is essential to understand their effects.

Process variables in organizational stress management intervention evaluation research: a systematic review

“…By adding mental models, for example, an explanation could be found for participants' motivation to take part in intervention activities or make use of intervention facilities. This was illustrated by Biron et al (29), who reported that managers failed to use a stress risk assessment tool (ie, dose received) because they did not feel that stress was a problem (ie, attitudes and perceptions of intervention users).…”

Consultants’ versus Managers’ - Perceptions of a Group Development Intervention Program

“…Several researchers [25][26][27] indicated the propensity for a constant shift in the surrounding environment to induce a disturbing impact on the possibility to implement change, which was the experience of both managers and consultants. Lack of time was a shared experience but differed in that the consultants felt they did not get enough time to work with the implementation and the managers that they had too much other things to do.…”

“…The consultants met with the plant managers and informed them of their vision and it was the consultants' experience that the reason they liked it was because it targeted their needs of creating teams out of the loose groups of managers and team leaders, a textbook example of "task alignment" [10]. The consultants' doubts as to whether it would have been better to work with the groups specific needs, something that were not possible due to the need to adapt the intervention to the factory's production, reflects a sensitivity to the needs of the managers [22,26]. Beside the theme where the consultants explained their status increase, the final themes may be construed as aspects of their role as process consultants [22] wherein they developed empathy and understanding for the clients and evaluated their actions and applied them as learning processes.…”

“…The experience of time-parsimony in interventions was shared mostly by consultants and the groups that showed retrograde development. This might be a shared experience of not targeting those groups [2] or the managers' [19] actual areas in need of development [26].…”

“…There seems to be ample evidence that concurrent organizational changes in the form of economic changes, employee turnover, management change and conflicting work demands exert a obstructive impact on an intervention implementation [25][26][27] since both focus and energy are drawn away from the intervention. In their study, regarding a particular corporate enterprise [16], connected the repeated changes that had been introduced and not implemented, due to interfering changes, with an emerging "change cynicism".…”