Blindness Rehabilitation Agencies and Organizational Environments

Previous research has suggested that the extent to which rehabilitation agencies must compete over clientele affects the structure and behavior of organizations. Institutional theory suggests, however, that increased competition is unlikely to affect the rehabilitation process and client outcomes. In this paper, multiple regression analysis on survey data from 135 agencies in 22 states suggested that organizational structure and behavior were not affected. However, increased competition did appear to lead to a greater retention of clientele while personnel constraints appeared to increase the referral of clients to other agencies. Since agencies have less control over funding and other related scarce resources, clientele appear to be the manipulable resource which can be referred or retained to meet organizational needs.