Introduction

As many community corrections agencies (for example, probation and parole agencies) undergo organisational change and evidence-based practice (EBP) implementation, most face a complex web of inter- and intra-organisational dynamics and contexts that make implementing reform challenging and sustaining reforms nearly impossible. Some of the demands come from external stakeholders such as judges, police departments, community groups and attorneys, but many reform challenges percolate from within the agency. These include barriers to change originating within existing organisational culture/climate and related to staff cynicism and organisational commitment. Some forward-thinking organisations undergoing change rely on organisational assessments to determine readiness or evaluate whether a culture supports the initiation and sustainment of EBPs. Despite the validity and reliability of organisational readiness surveys for gauging staff perceptions of their organisation pre-change, these assessments may not fully capture the rich contextual nuance encompassing an agency's multifaceted milieu.

Most organisational assessments include some measure of culture/climate, cynicism and commitment. These characteristics are widely studied in organisational scholarship, and more recently in corrections research. Each concept reflects aspects of the agency, where culture/climate reflect umbrella constructs and commitment and cynicism serve as proxy measures of organisational functioning and work-related impacts such as job satisfaction or burnout. Although culture and climate are different constructs, scholars use them synonymously in the literature. In fact, climate refers to perceptions of norms and values dictating observable formal and informal practices and procedures within the workplace (Guion, 1973) and culture refers to the evolution and impact of those shared meanings and organisational structures on groups and individuals (Kunda, 1992). While scholars typically discuss culture/climate at the agency level, it also exists at the local level within smaller departments or units. Organisational culture, particularly at local levels, is plainly ‘the way things get done’ (Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Rudes and Viglione, 2014, p 623). Local culture may contribute to the broader agency culture, but also may compete with it. As a result, culture acts as both a barrier and facilitator to organisational change where the ease of change is largely contingent on how the change is introduced to the organisation and its degree of suggested and actual alignment with local norms and values.