This book brings together a variety of the best papers from an international research symposium on organisational behaviour in healthcare. It includes contributions from key names such as Sandra Dawson and Peter Spurgeon with a foreword by Rosemary Stewart. Also including chapters from Australia, Canada and Europe, it is consciously international in perspective and aims to relate the public sector agenda as a comparator for developments in the US.

* A practical introduction to the business of management for doctors and managers at all levels * This simple guide provides easy-to-use tools and techniques * It explains jargon, presents managerial tasks in context and provides managerial models

Over the last thirty years, scholars of health care organizations have been searching for concepts and images to illuminate their underlying, and shifting, modes of organizing. Nowhere has this controversy been more intense than in the United Kingdom, given the long succession of top down reorganizations within the National Health Service (NHS) over the last thirty years. This book characterises the nature of key reforms - namely managed networks - introduced in the UK National Health Service during the New Labour period (1997-2010), combining rich empirical case material of such managed networks drawn from different health policy arenas (clinical genetics, cancer networks, sexual health networks, and long term care) with a theoretically informed analysis. The book makes three key contributions. Firstly, it argues that New Labour's reforms included an important network element consistent with underlying network governance ideas, specifying conditions of 'success' for these managed networks and exploring how much progress was empirically evident. Secondly, in order to conceptualise many of the complex health policy arenas studied, the book uses the concept of 'wicked problems': problematic situations with no obvious solutions, whose scope goes beyond any one agency, often with conflicting stakeholder interests, where there are major social and behavioural dimensions to be considered alongside clinical considerations. Thirdly, it makes a contribution to the expanding Foucauldian and governmentality-based literature on health care organizations, by retheorising organizational processes and policy developments which do not fit either professional dominance or NPM models from a governmentality perspective. From the empirical evidence gathered, the book argues that managed networks (as opposed to alternative governance modes of hierarchy or markets) may well be the most suitable governance mode in those many and expanding policy arenas characterised by 'wicked problems', and should be given more time to develop and reach their potential.

While the implementation of evidence-based medicine guidelines is well studied, there has been little investigation into the extent to which a parallel evidence-based management movement has been influential within health care organizations. This book explores the various management knowledges and associated texts apparent in English health care organizations, and considers how the local reception of these texts was influenced by the macro level political economy of public services reform evident during the period of the politics of austerity. The research outlined in this volume shows that very few evidence-based management texts are apparent within health care organizations, despite the influence of certain knowledge producers, such as national agencies, think tanks, management consultancies, and business schools in the industry. Bringing together the often disconnected academic literature on management knowledge and public policy, the volume addresses the ways in which preferred management knowledges and texts in these publicly funded settings are sensitive to the macro level political economy of public services reform, offering an empirically grounded critique of the evidence-based management movement.

Context is a central concept in organization and management studies, yet it is often used in a generalized, unspecific manner. This book offers an interactionist view on context as a dynamic, relational, and socially enacted phenomenon. It explores context in action and the theoretical, methodological, and analytical consequences of this approach through a collection of reflections and research experiences from the dynamic field of health care. In the opening chapters, the editors present their framework for studying context in action and outline three main approaches, centered on the following questions: What constitutes context for a phenomenon or an event? How do actors understand, experience, and engage with context? How do contexts change and what is the role of actors in such processes? Context and action are then explored through a range of topics such as enactment and organizational change, policy implementation, executive work, strategic change, materiality, technology, patients and relatives' perspectives, integrated care, quality improvement, and health care support work. Relevant to both management researchers and practitioners, this volume provides a definition of context as theoretical construct based on interactionist and process based perspectives, and a practical framework for studying context in action which the reader can use in their own work.

Executive coaching is a professional and personal development intervention that organizations introduce to address and improve those areas in managers and leaders behavior, attitude, and interactions with others that do not allow him/her to work at full potential and also to further improve one's own strengths. The end objective, besides the development of the managers and leaders, is for the organization to benefit in the long-run from the coachee's improved performance. The book provides a comprehensive overview of the executive coaching field both in terms of practice and in terms of relevant research on executive coaching outcomes. It assesses the empirical research on executive coaching outcomes and links the executive coaching field with the fields of leadership and leadership development. The book will be of value to both practitioners (coaches, HR professionals, executives, consultants etc.), academics and researchers with an interest in coaching or leadership development.

The Modernization of the Nursing Workforce: Valuing the healthcare assistant is based on recently completed research exploring the role of healthcare assistants (HCA) in acute hospitals. Whilst a support role working alongside registered nurses has been a longstanding feature of the NHS, the contemporary HCA role has become increasingly central to the process of health service modernization. The role is now assuming even greater importance as the ramifications of financial constraints, restructuring and other pressures on the NHS play out. The issue is becoming increasingly relevant as the government has commissioned an independent review into the role of healthcare assistants, the Cavendish Review, which uses this book extensively. The HCA role is unregulated and low paid, but by taking-on direct care tasks from registered nurses, the role has become politically sensitive. The HCA remains a cheap and flexible source of labour, but the unregulated role encourages dilemmas and public scrutiny over risk and patient safety. The book explores how public policy reform of the health service feeds through to impact upon the management and structure of the healthcare workforce. More specifically, the book provides a timely evidence base for the extended and growing use of the HCA role. The book draws upon a multi-method research design from four geographically located hospital trusts in England, which during a three year period saw over 270 staff interviewed, focus groups and interviews with over 100 patients, some 275 hours of ward-based observation, and detailed survey responses from over 3,000 members of staff and hospital patients. The unusual richness of the data allows a definitive examination of who undertakes the HCA role, its shape, nature and diversity, along with the consequences for those with a stake in the role - hospital managers, the assistants themselves, the patients they care for and the nurses they work alongside, making The Modernization of the Nursing Workforce: Valuing the healthcare assistant essential reading for health care studies and public management communities, and those charged with training and education policy.

The last five decades have seen a sea-change in business and in management studies. The world of business has been transformed by powerful forces: globalization, IT, outsourcing and all manner of organizational reshaping and flattening. At the same time Management Studies has seen a massive expansion in courses, students and teachers, driven in part by a quest for new and broader models. The ground covered by Management Studies, and the way Management Studies maps this, have changed.
This book, written by specialist experts, analyses these developments in Management Studies, giving a concise guide to specific areas. Working from the broader global and technological context, it explores a range of sectors - private, public and professional - and conclude by examining specific functions involved in management, such as Corporate Strategy, Information Technology, Operations Management, and Marketing.
The authors are all associated with Templeton College at the University of Oxford, a school known for its close work with managers, companies, and other types of organizations, through its executive education programs and high-impact business research. This experience, and its specialist knowledge, leaves it uniquely positioned to chronicle and comment on the development of the discipline of management studies and point the way ahead.

Health services can and should be improved by applying research findings about best practice. Yet, in Knowledge to Action?, the authors explore why it nevertheless proves notoriously difficult to implement research evidence in the face of strong professional views and complex organizational structures.
Drawing on a large body of evidence acquired in the course of nearly fifty in-depth case studies following attempts to introduce evidence-based practice in the UK NHS over more than a decade. Using qualitative methods to study hospital and primary care settings, they are able to shed light on why some of these attempts succeeded where others faltered. By opening up the intricacies and complexities of change in the NHS, they reveal the limitations of the simplistic approaches to implementing research or introducing evidence-based health care.
A unique synthesis of evidence, the book brings together data from 1,400 interviews with doctors, nurses, and managers, as well as detailed observations and documentary analysis. The authors provide an analysis, rooted in a range of theoretical perspectives, that underlines the intimate links between organizational structures and cultures and the utilization of knowledge, and draws conclusions which will be of significance for other areas of public management. Their findings have implications for the utilization of knowledge in situations where there is a professional tradition working within a politically sensitive blend of public service, managerial accountability, and technical expertise.
A unique synthesis of evidence, the book brings together data from 1,400 interviews with doctors, nurses, and managers, as well as detailedobservations and documentary analysis. The authors provide an analysis, rooted in a range of theoretical perspectives, that underlines the intimate links between organizational structures and cultures and the utilization of knowledge, and draws conclusions which will be of significance for other areas of public management. Their findings have implications for the utilization of knowledge in situations where there is a professional tradition working within a politically sensitive blend of public service, managerial accountability, and technical expertise.

Health services can and should be improved by applying research findings about best practice. Yet, in Knowledge to Action?, the authors explore why it nevertheless proves notoriously difficult to implement research evidence in the face of strong professional views and complex organizational structures.
Drawing on a large body of evidence acquired in the course of nearly fifty in-depth case studies following attempts to introduce evidence-based practice in the UK NHS over more than a decade. Using qualitative methods to study hospital and primary care settings, they are able to shed light on why some of these attempts succeeded where others faltered. By opening up the intricacies and complexities of change in the NHS, they reveal the limitations of the simplistic approaches to implementing research or introducing evidence-based health care.
A unique synthesis of evidence, the book brings together data from 1,400 interviews with doctors, nurses, and managers, as well as detailed observations and documentary analysis. The authors provide an analysis, rooted in a range of theoretical perspectives, that underlines the intimate links between organizational structures and cultures and the utilization of knowledge, and draws conclusions which will be of significance for other areas of public management. Their findings have implications for the utilization of knowledge in situations where there is a professional tradition working within a politically sensitive blend of public service, managerial accountability, and technical expertise.
A unique synthesis of evidence, the book brings together data from 1,400 interviews with doctors, nurses, and managers, as well as detailedobservations and documentary analysis. The authors provide an analysis, rooted in a range of theoretical perspectives, that underlines the intimate links between organizational structures and cultures and the utilization of knowledge, and draws conclusions which will be of significance for other areas of public management. Their findings have implications for the utilization of knowledge in situations where there is a professional tradition working within a politically sensitive blend of public service, managerial accountability, and technical expertise.