Hodgson and Carter present a volume that contributes to the ongoing debate in Knowledge Management. They develop themes explored in Roy Jacques' influential text, Manufacturing the Employee, as a starting point the authors consider the status of contemporary management knowledge. They do this from a range of theoretical positions that draw key implications for both research and teaching. The volume hosts an array of eminent scholars in the field. The collection explores, and at times takes issue with, the increasing influence of post-structuralist thought on our understanding of the nature of management knowledge, and draws key implications for both research and teaching. The various chapters consider the nature of management knowledge from perspectives as diverse as management history, discourse analysis, gender, post-structuralism, social construction, neo-institutionalism, and critical realism.

Until now, research has given us only a limited understanding of how managers actually make sense of and apply management knowledge; how networks of interaction amongst managers help or hinder processes of knowledge diffusion and the sharing of best practice; and how these processes are all influenced both by the organisations in which managers act and by the professional communities of practice they belong to. Managing Modern Healthcare fills these important gaps in our understanding by drawing upon an in-depth study of management networks and practice in three healthcare organisations in the UK. It draws from the primary research a number of important and grounded lessons about how management networks develop and influence the spread of management knowledge and practice; how management training and development relates to the needs of managers facing challenging conditions; and how those conditions are themselves shaping the nature of management in healthcare. This book reveals how managers in practice are responding to the many contemporary challenges facing healthcare (and the NHS in particular) and how they are able or not to effectively exploit sources of knowledge, learning and best practice through the networks of practice they engage in to improve healthcare delivery and healthcare organisational performance. Managing Modern Healthcare makes a number of important theoretical contributions as well as practical recommendations. The theoretical and empirical contributions the book makes relate to wider work on networks and networking, management knowledge, situated learning/communities of practice, professionalization/professional identity and healthcare management more generally. The practical contribution comes in the form of recommendations for healthcare management practitioners and policy makers that are intended to impact upon and help enhance healthcare management delivery and performance.

Until now, research has given us only a limited understanding of how managers actually make sense of and apply management knowledge; how networks of interaction amongst managers help or hinder processes of knowledge diffusion and the sharing of best practice; and how these processes are all influenced both by the organisations in which managers act and by the professional communities of practice they belong to. Managing Modern Healthcare fills these important gaps in our understanding by drawing upon an in-depth study of management networks and practice in three healthcare organisations in the UK. It draws from the primary research a number of important and grounded lessons about how management networks develop and influence the spread of management knowledge and practice; how management training and development relates to the needs of managers facing challenging conditions; and how those conditions are themselves shaping the nature of management in healthcare. This book reveals how managers in practice are responding to the many contemporary challenges facing healthcare (and the NHS in particular) and how they are able or not to effectively exploit sources of knowledge, learning and best practice through the networks of practice they engage in to improve healthcare delivery and healthcare organisational performance. Managing Modern Healthcare makes a number of important theoretical contributions as well as practical recommendations. The theoretical and empirical contributions the book makes relate to wider work on networks and networking, management knowledge, situated learning/communities of practice, professionalization/professional identity and healthcare management more generally. The practical contribution comes in the form of recommendations for healthcare management practitioners and policy makers that are intended to impact upon and help enhance healthcare management delivery and performance.

In recent decades, we have witnessed an increasing use of projects and similar temporary modes of organising in the public sector of nations in Europe and around the world. While for some this is a welcome development which unlocks entrepreneurial zeal and renders public services more flexible and accountable, others argue that this seeks to depoliticise policy initiatives, rendering them increasingly technocratic, and that the project organisations formed in this process offer fragmented and unsustainable short-term solutions to long-term problems. This volume sets out to address public sector projectification by drawing together research from a range of academic fields to develop a critical and theoretically-informed understanding of the causes, nature, and consequences of the projectification of the public sector. This book includes 13 chapters and is organised into three parts. The first part centres on the politics of projectification, specifically the role of projects in de-politicisation, often accomplished by rendering the political "technical". The chapters in the second part all relate to the reframing of the relationship between the centre and periphery, or between policy making and implementation, and the role of temporality in reshaping this relation. The third and final part brings a focus upon the tools, techniques, and agents through which public sector projectification is assembled, constructed, and performed.

In recent decades, we have witnessed an increasing use of projects and similar temporary modes of organising in the public sector of nations in Europe and around the world. While for some this is a welcome development which unlocks entrepreneurial zeal and renders public services more flexible and accountable, others argue that this seeks to depoliticise policy initiatives, rendering them increasingly technocratic, and that the project organisations formed in this process offer fragmented and unsustainable short-term solutions to long-term problems. This volume sets out to address public sector projectification by drawing together research from a range of academic fields to develop a critical and theoretically-informed understanding of the causes, nature, and consequences of the projectification of the public sector. This book includes 13 chapters and is organised into three parts. The first part centres on the politics of projectification, specifically the role of projects in de-politicisation, often accomplished by rendering the political "technical". The chapters in the second part all relate to the reframing of the relationship between the centre and periphery, or between policy making and implementation, and the role of temporality in reshaping this relation. The third and final part brings a focus upon the tools, techniques, and agents through which public sector projectification is assembled, constructed, and performed.

Making Projects Critical is an edited collection contributed by a range of international scholars linking the area of project management with critical management perspectives. Recent debates have suggested that the problems inherent in project management in practice (cost overruns, delays etc) reside in the prescriptive, functionalist and quantitative tradition inherited by project management from the narrow perspective of operations management. Making Projects Critical widens the scope of project management by considering project management within a wider organizational and societal context.