Rekindling the discourse: Organization studies in community psychology

The dual aims of this article are to examine the research on organizations within community psychology and to explore the discourse around organization studies within the field. To that end, we turn to two questions first posed by Keys and Frank: "What does community psychology contribute to the study of organizations?" and "What does the study of organizations contribute to community psychology?" Through a content analysis of all organizational studies published in the American Journal of Community Psychology and Journal of Community Psychology from 1977 through the end of 2000, we found that organization constructs and theories are not widely utilized by community psyhologists, When community psychologists did explore organizational issues the focus was on community psychology tenets such as social support, empowerment, stress and coping, and sense of community within organization contexts. The use of organization theory was found to be almost nonexistent. Although a bridge between the two fields is tentative at this point, we argue for a strengthening of the relationship between the fields. Community psychology can offer a focus on the well-being of people via conceptualization of the tenets of community psychology in organizational contexts. The organization studies literature can aid the community psychologist with its more recent focus on worker-oriented approaches, and with the macrooriented theory base of the field. Suggestions are offered to expand the boundaries of both fields.