The future of organizational interventions: Addressing the challenges of today's organizations

Organizational-level interventions often fail to bring about the desired results, but the reasons for this are still unclear. This introductory paper to a special issue of Work & Stress on organizational interventions discusses three issues to be considered in future intervention research if our understanding of the effectiveness of interventions is to be increased. First, there is a need to understand how and why interventions work. This calls for an examination of the processes connecting interventions to the desired outcomes. Second, attention should be paid to the appropriateness of interventions. Problems may be difficult to address, for example when they constitute inherent conditions of the job. Third, the use of a quasi-experimental study design does not guarantee a valid picture of the effectiveness of an intervention. For example, control groups may not be comparable to the experimental group, or participants may not be reached by the intervention. Based on these considerations, we conclude that mixed methods designs are needed to integrate process and outcome evaluation and increase the generalizability of interventions. Whereas concurrent changes such as mergers and downsizing may hinder the effectiveness of an intervention, they are part of today's organizations and should therefore be integrated into intervention designs.