Simon Bailey

John Hassard

Paula Hyde

Mike Bresnen

Damian Hodgson

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.

Knowledge, Networks and Practice

Managing Modern Healthcare

Leo McCann

Edward Granter

Who are NHS middle managers? What do they do, and why and how do they do it’? This book explores the daily realities of working life for middle managers in the UK’s National Health Service during a time of radical change and disruption to the entire edifice of publicly-funded healthcare. It is an empirical critique of the movement towards a healthcare model based around HMO-type providers such as Kaiser Permanente and United Health. Although this model is well-known internationally, many believe it to be financially and ethically questionable, and often far from 'best practice' when it comes to patient care. Drawing on immersive ethnographic research based on four case studies – an Acute Hospital Trust, an Ambulance Trust, a Mental Health Trust, and a Primary Care Trust – this book provides an in-depth critical appraisal of the everyday experiences of a range of managers working in the NHS. It describes exactly what NHS managers do and explains how their roles are changing and the types of challenges they face. The analysis explains how many NHS junior and middle managers are themselves clinicians to some extent, with hybrid roles as simultaneously nurse and manager, midwife and manager, or paramedic and manager. While commonly working in ‘back office’ functions, NHS middle managers are also just as likely to be working very close to or actually on the front lines of patient care. Despite the problems they regularly face from organizational restructuring, cost control and demands for accountability, the authors demonstrate that NHS managers – in their various guises – play critical, yet undervalued, institutional roles. Depicting the darker sides of organizational change, this text is a sociological exploration of the daily struggle for work dignity of a complex, widely denigrated, and largely misunderstood group of public servants trying to do their best under extremely trying circumstances. It is essential reading for academics, students, and practitioners interested in health management and policy, organisational change, public sector management, and the NHS more broadly.

Managing Healthcare in the Age of Reform

Deconstructing the Welfare State

Paula Hyde

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