The complex makeup of the substance abuse treatment workforce poses unique challenges to the field. One interesting dynamic is the high rate of counselors who are personally recovering from addictions. Based on social identity theory, it was expected that counselors working in the field of substance abuse treatment who are in recovery themselves will identify more with their profession and report higher professional and organizational commitment. Data from a study of substance abuse counselors from across the United States support the proposed relationship between personal recovery status and professional commitment but not organizational commitment.
The substance abuse treatment field faces many human resource management challenges due to the fact that clinicians have high caseloads and low pay and often face both resistance to treatment and relapse among their clients. Perhaps because of these factors, the turnover rate among clinicians is high, estimated anywhere from 16% (McNulty, Oser, Johnson, Knudsen, & Roman, 2007) up to over 50% annually (McLellan, Carise, & Kleber, 2003). The substance abuse treatment workforce is also unique because many clinicians are in recovery from substance abuse themselves. Previous studies have found the percentage of counselors in recovery ranging from 37% (McNulty et al., 2007) to 57% (Knudsen, Ducharme, & Roman, 2006).
The substance abuse treatment field provides a unique opportunity for personal and professional identities to align that does not exist in many other fields. This study proposes that recovery status, or whether or not someone is personally in recovery, represents an important anchor for an individual's self-identity such that those who are in recovery will identify more with their profession, attach greater meaning to their day-to-day work tasks, and as a consequence experience a greater sense of meaning at work than those who are not in recovery. This identification is expected to foster commitment to both the profession and the employing organization. Examining both professional and organizational commitment is important because they are distinct constructs (Meyer et al., 1993 and Wallace, 1993). Specifically, research finds that professional commitment is strongly related to intent to remain in a profession, whereas organizational commitment is strongly related to remaining in one's organization (Blau, 2000, Lee et al., 2000 and Meyer et al., 1993). Moreover, although professional commitment is also related to intentions to remain in the organization and organizational commitment is related to intentions to stay in the profession, the effect sizes are weaker than those where the form of commitment is matched with the target outcome. This makes intuitive sense; an individual may be highly committed to the profession but express intentions to leave the organization due to a variety of working conditions (e.g., poor supervision, low pay). Likewise, an individual may express low professional commitment but remain at the organization because of strong relationships with coworkers, lack of available alternatives, or out of financial need.
