Hybridity, Status, and Strategy: Services for Both Intimate Partner Violence and Alcohol and Other Drug Use

Purpose: Intimate partner violence (IPV) and alcohol and other drug use (AOD) co-occur extensively but are rarely addressed together due to differences in organizational characteristics, philosophies, and practices across domains. Drawing on theories from sociology and organizational studies, I conceptualize AOD and IPV as discrete “intervention fields,” each defined by a shared issue, common symbols, practices, underlying rationales, criteria for distributing resources, and internal competition over approaches. These literatures suggest hybridity—the provision of services for both IPV and AOD—is possible in specific types of organizations: those who are marginal or elite within field-specific status hierarchies. Using a mixed methods dataset, this paper develops field-specific indices of status and considers their relationship to IPV-AOD hybridity.

Methods: Relevant organizations in a 9-county metropolitan area were identified from four directories (two focused on AOD, two on IPV). Information on organizational structure (founding date, total revenue, number of staff, ownership status) and practices (formal focus (NTEE, NAICS and SIC codes), mission, activities) was coded from the directories, additional databases and organizational websites. The dataset includes 386 organizations, 17.6% (68) focused primarily on IPV and 82.4% (318) focused primarily on AOD. A subset of organizations were defined as hybrid if listed by both IPV and AOD sources, referenced both issues in their mission statements or services for both on their websites. Field-specific indices of status were developed from semi-structured interviews with experts in either field (n=27) and summarize the centrality of the target issue to organizational identities, the range of issue-specific services provided, and field-specific measures describing key activities/approaches. Univariate and bivariate statistics demonstrate differences between hybrid and non-hybrids; logistic regression is used to consider the contribution of status to hybridity.

Results: Overall, the incidence of hybridity is low (13.2%, 51). It is significantly more common among IPV organizations (25.0%, 17) than AOD organizations (10.7%, 39). Hybridity is significantly associated with low (80.0%, 32) versus medium (33.3%, 11) or high status (27.6%, 8) in the IPV field but weakly associated with high status in the AOD field. Most hybrids (68.6%, 35) are low status in both fields. All offer services for both issues, though the strategies employed differ by status and field. Organizations with low status in both fields and high AOD/low IPV status organizations generally address IPV and AOD in separate, internal programs (segregation) or address them through collaboration with another organization (segmentation). High IPV/low AOD status organizations are equally likely to employ segmentation and assimilation (addressing AOD within activities focused on IPV).  

Conclusions & Implications: Findings suggest the relationship between status and hybridity is field-specific. While low status predicts hybridity in the IPV field, this relationship is reversed and weaker in the AOD field, suggesting differences in resource requirements for hybridity depending on primary field. Differences in the relationship between field, status and hybridity strategy underscore this point. Dynamics within the AOD field appear to limit substantive forms of hybridity like assimilation, while factors in the IPV field appear to favor them. Fully untangling these relationships requires further study.