Purveyor Organizations and the Implementation of Employee Assistance Programs

Abstract

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.