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Strategic choice and organizational performance of state mental health agencies in community-based services for the long-term mentally ill
Abstract
Research on performance has emerged independently within two schools of thought. Research by organizational theorists based on contingency models has focused on the relationship between environment, structure, or technology and performance, while research in the management arena has focused on the relationship between management activities and performance. Only recently has research on performance begun to integrate these two perspectives, examining the interdependent contributions of strategy, environment, and structure to performance. However, this research has been conducted largely on for-profit firms. Very little research of this type has been conducted on public or non-profit agencies. This research investigated the relationship between strategic choice, environment, structure, and organizational performance in state mental health agencies. These state government agencies exist in all states and territories and have responsibility for policy, funding, and regulating agencies that receive public mental health dollars. The research focused on performance in community-based services for only one client group, adults with long-term mental illness. The measure of performance was per capita expenditures for community services for persons with long-term mental illness. This performance measure was operationalized as the total community dollars expended per long-term mentally ill client served in fiscal year 1985. Regression analysis was used to assess the relative contribution of strategic choice, environment, and structure to performance. Findings suggest that both strategic choice and environment have a significant impact on performance, with environment having the greater impact. Structure was not found to be significantly related to performance. The types of strategic choices used by state mental health agencies were also examined. In this analysis, agencies were divided into high-and-low performance groups by dichotomizing performance scores at the mean. Data on strategic choice tactics were factor analyzed, resulting in the identification of three types of tactics, political, change, and cost-leadership. Findings indicate that high-performance agencies use political and change tactics more frequently than low-performance agencies, with the strongest link being found between political tactics and performance.
Subject Area
Mental health|Management
Recommended Citation
Daniels, La Vonne, "Strategic choice and organizational performance of state mental health agencies in community-based services for the long-term mentally ill" (1988). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8911106.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8911106