Context and Variation in Employer Policies on Alcohol

1987 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Staudenmeier

The last decade has seen the widespread adoption by employers of occupational alcoholism programs designed to address the alcohol problems of employees. This innovative pattern of alcohol-related employer policy has received considerable attention in the scientific literature while other, traditional employer policies persist with relative inattention. This paper frames a broad perspective on employer alcohol policy by looking at four current patterns of policy: 1. Drinking on the Job, 2. Dry on the Job, 3. Employer Prohibition, and 4. Occupational Alcoholism Programs (including Employee Assistance Programs). The author explores the systematic variation among employers in their alcohol policies and emphasizes the relationship among alcohol-related culture, policy and practice. The existence of conflicting cultural positions on alcohol makes the United States an especially interesting case for this analysis.

1975 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 344-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Mäkelä

Sociologists, particularly in the United States, have devoted little attention to the impact of centrally directed alcohol policies on drinking problems. Sociocultural studies of religious and ethnic differences In drinking behavior appear to suggest that the liberalization of alcohol policies would favor the growth of moderate drinking patterns at the expense of excessive drinking. However, this “substitution hypothesis” receives less support in Scandinavian research on alcohol policy than does an alternative “addition hypothesis.” When policy controls on alcohol are relaxed, increases in moderate consumption occur in addition to and not at the expense of relatively stable patterns of heavy drinking.


1987 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 345-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Peter Brock

The history of the employee assistance movement has its roots in the worker's health movement of the early 1900s and the employee alcohol assistance programs of the 1940s. The author discusses the important role alcohol assistance programs played in the evolution of current employee assistance programs and makes a very important distinction between programs that deal with alcohol-related problems and those that are currently being used for drug-related problems. The issue is raised of the fine line between using urinalyses as a method of rehabilitation and using it as a form of policing.


2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Hardison Walters ◽  
Keshia M. Pollack ◽  
Monique Clinton-Sherrod ◽  
Christine H. Lindquist ◽  
Tasseli McKay ◽  
...  

Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) are workplace resources available to employees with problems impacting work performance. EAPs are well-positioned to address intimate partner violence (IPV), a major public health problem with workplace impacts. A purposeful sample of 28 EAPs across the United States was surveyed to identify policies and programs to address IPV, including perpetration. Most EAPs did not report having standardized approaches for addressing IPV perpetration. EAPs also described significant barriers to identifying IPV perpetrators, with the majority relying on self-disclosure on the part of the perpetrator when contacting the EAP. These results suggest that many EAPs—even when interacting with employees who present with issues known to correlate with IPV—are missing a potential opportunity to assess and intervene with IPV perpetrators.


2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-130
Author(s):  
Ziming Xuan ◽  
Jason G. Blanchette ◽  
Toben F. Nelson ◽  
Timothy C. Heeren ◽  
Thien H. Nguyen ◽  
...  

Xuan, Z., Blanchette, J., Nelson, T., Heeren, T., Nguyen, T., & Naimi, T. (2015). Alcohol policies and impaired driving in the United States: Effects of driving- vs. drinking-oriented policies. The International Journal Of Alcohol And Drug Research, 4(2), 119-130. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.7895/ijadr.v4i2.205Aims: To test the hypotheses that stronger policy environments are associated with less impaired driving and that driving-orientedand drinking-oriented policy subgroups are independently associated with impaired driving.Design: State-level data on 29 policies in 50 states from 2001-2009 were used as lagged exposures in generalized linearregression models to predict self-reported impaired driving.Setting: Fifty United States and Washington, D.C.Participants: A total of 1,292,245 adults (≥ 18 years old) biennially from 2002–2010.Measures: Alcohol Policy Scale scores representing the alcohol policy environment were created by summing policies weightedby their efficacy and degree of implementation by state-year. Past-30-day alcohol-impaired driving from 2002–2010 wasobtained from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System surveys.Findings: Higher Alcohol Policy Scale scores are strongly associated with lower state-level prevalence and individual-level risk of impaired driving. After accounting for driving-oriented policies, drinking-oriented policies had a robust independent association with reduced likelihood of impaired driving. Reduced binge drinking mediates the relationship between drinking-oriented policies and impaired driving, and driving-oriented policies reduce the likelihood of impaired driving among binge drinkers.Conclusions: Efforts to reduce alcohol-impaired driving should focus on reducing excessive drinking in addition to preventing driving among those who are impaired.


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Gamso

A large scholarship surrounds the relationship between trade and the environment, with much of it centering on whether trade produces a race to the bottom or a race to the top in the environments of developing countries. While the effects of trade on key pollutants and on specific environmental policies have been widely attended to, scholars have not yet considered if and how trade impacts developing nations’ environmental performance, broadly speaking. This is a critical matter, as the effects of trade on the environment can only be appreciated fully through holistic assessment of the environment and environmental protection. The study that follows helps to fill this void through analysis of an all-inclusive measure of environmental performance that encompasses indicators of policy and practice. Findings demonstrate that exporting to the United States and the European Union improves environmental performance in developing countries; however, no such effect accompanies trade with other countries.


1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Foote ◽  
John C Erfurt

Discussion of alcohol-focused us. comprehensive programs leads to the conclusion that the primary difference between the two program models is not the disease focus but the program structure. Programs focused on alcohol problems tend to emphasize the role of supervisors in identification and confrontation; programs focused more broadly tend to emphasize the role of the employee assistance program. Data relevant to these issues suggest that supervisors are no more likely than others within industrial organizations to identify employees having alcohol problems, although confrontation by a supervisor may have a greater impact. The EAP model was found to be more prevalent among larger plants than smaller ones. Programs that saw primarily alcoholics did not in general see more alcoholics than programs that provided services for a wider variety of problems, as long as at least one-third of the client group had alcohol problems.


2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziming Xuan ◽  
Jason G. Blanchette ◽  
Toben F. Nelson ◽  
Timothy C. Heeren ◽  
Thien H. Nguyen ◽  
...  

Xuan, Z., Blanchette, J., Nelson, T., Heeren, T., Nguyen, T., & Naimi, T. (2015). Alcohol policies and impaired driving in the United States: Effects of driving- vs. drinking-oriented policies. The International Journal Of Alcohol And Drug Research, 4(2), 119-130. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.7895/ijadr.v4i2.205Aims: To test the hypotheses that stronger policy environments are associated with less impaired driving and that driving-orientedand drinking-oriented policy subgroups are independently associated with impaired driving.Design: State-level data on 29 policies in 50 states from 2001-2009 were used as lagged exposures in generalized linearregression models to predict self-reported impaired driving.Setting: Fifty United States and Washington, D.C.Participants: A total of 1,292,245 adults (≥ 18 years old) biennially from 2002–2010.Measures: Alcohol Policy Scale scores representing the alcohol policy environment were created by summing policies weightedby their efficacy and degree of implementation by state-year. Past-30-day alcohol-impaired driving from 2002–2010 wasobtained from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System surveys.Findings: Higher Alcohol Policy Scale scores are strongly associated with lower state-level prevalence and individual-level risk of impaired driving. After accounting for driving-oriented policies, drinking-oriented policies had a robust independent association with reduced likelihood of impaired driving. Reduced binge drinking mediates the relationship between drinking-oriented policies and impaired driving, and driving-oriented policies reduce the likelihood of impaired driving among binge drinkers.Conclusions: Efforts to reduce alcohol-impaired driving should focus on reducing excessive drinking in addition to preventing driving among those who are impaired.


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