Psychosocial Interventions and Salutogenic Organizations: Systematic Review Evidence of Theory, Context, Implementation and Outcome

Abstract

This chapter explores and synthesizes systematic review evidence of the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions in workplace settings, along with broader issues of theory, implementation and context. Evidence from reviews demonstrate that theoretical and empirical research into psychosocial interventions has tended to focus on workplaces, rather than other types or organization or population settings. Furthermore, most of the research evaluates individual-level interventions, despite the fact that organizational-level interventions are arguably preferable as preventative measures. The reviews identified relatively little evidence relating to implementation and contextual factors that may influence the outcomes of organizational interventions. They also illustrate how the research community has generally failed to rise to the challenge of ensuring that social interventions likely to have an impact on health should also be evaluated in terms of their impacts on health inequalities. However, the chapter demonstrates that useful findings can be derived from flawed evidence, and that there is evidence to suggest organizational-level interventions can improve health through psychosocial pathways. This supports the case for recommending that more interventions of this kind should be implemented on both a local and macro scale as health improving measures. Evaluators should use new interventions as opportunities to learn more about implementation, context and the social patterning of health impacts.