Gerry McGivern
University of Warwick, Warwick Business School, Faculty Member
- Knowledge Management, Leadership, Sociology of Knowledge, Anthropology of Knowledge, Regulation And Governance, Professionalism, and 11 moreHealthcare Management, Management, Biotechnology, Innovation statistics, Michel Foucault, Psychotherapy and Counseling, Public Management, Collaboration, Networks, Organizational Learning, and Transparencyedit
- Gerry is Professor of Organizational Analysis at Warwick Business School and an Associate Fellow at the Said Business... moreGerry is Professor of Organizational Analysis at Warwick Business School and an Associate Fellow at the Said Business School, University of Oxford.
His research focuses on professionals; understanding the nature of their knowledge and practice, identities, and how they are affected by systems of regulation and organisation, predominantly in health care.
Gerry's work has been published in leading management journals, including Organization Studies, Human Relations, Social Science and Medicine, Public Administration and the British Journal of Management.
He was Principal Investigatator for a recent ESRC-funded research project on transparency and regulation in medicine and psychological therapies and Co-Investigator for a NIHR SDO-funded project on the use of managerial knowledges in health care organizations.
Gerry previously worked for Price Waterhouse, technology consultancy Ovum and HR consultancy EMPLOYeSURVEYS and in academic roles at Warwick University, Royal Holloway, University of London, and King’s College London.
He holds a MA in Organisational Analysis and Behaviour from Lancaster University Management School and a PhD in Organisational Behaviour from Imperial College Business School.edit
Managed networks are increasingly common in the British National Health Service (NHS) as a means of streamlining and standardizing patient care across organizational and professional boundaries. However, there has been limited research... more
Managed networks are increasingly common in the British National Health Service (NHS) as a means of streamlining and standardizing patient care across organizational and professional boundaries. However, there has been limited research regarding whether this technique is the most appropriate management style for delivery of health services. This article draws upon the authors' research on managed clinical networks for cancer in the UK–a model that set out to guide and develop knowledge flows across cancer service providers. It examines how the initial purpose of these networks was distorted by the broader function of New Labour's ‘modernization agenda’, which has ultimately focused on organizational restructuring and adhering to government targets. Our analysis, which develops Lozeau, Langley and Denis's model of the corruption of managerial techniques, suggests that the initial knowledge-sharing purpose of networks underwent top-down ‘distortion’ by the demands of central government. This resulted in superficial bottom-up adoption of the networks model and limited impact upon organizational processes.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Business and Health Care
Managed networks are increasingly common in the British National Health Service (NHS) as a means of streamlining and standardizing patient care across organizational and professional boundaries. However, there has been limited research... more
Managed networks are increasingly common in the British National Health Service (NHS) as a means of streamlining and standardizing patient care across organizational and professional boundaries. However, there has been limited research regarding whether this technique is the most appropriate management style for delivery of health services. This article draws upon the authors' research on managed clinical networks for cancer in the UK–a model that set out to guide and develop knowledge flows across cancer service providers. It examines how the initial purpose of these networks was distorted by the broader function of New Labour's ‘modernization agenda’, which has ultimately focused on organizational restructuring and adhering to government targets. Our analysis, which develops Lozeau, Langley and Denis's model of the corruption of managerial techniques, suggests that the initial knowledge-sharing purpose of networks underwent top-down ‘distortion’ by the demands of central government. This resulted in superficial bottom-up adoption of the networks model and limited impact upon organizational processes.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Leadership development and its effectiveness has not been explored in depth across university settings. Few studies link leadership development programmes to organisational outcomes in Higher Education (HE) or performance assessment... more
Leadership development and its effectiveness has not been explored in depth across university settings. Few studies link leadership development programmes to organisational outcomes in Higher Education (HE) or performance assessment exercises, such as the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF). This review explores what is known in the area of the impact of leadership development in HE settings and offers a contribution to further thinking in this field.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Business and Health Care
We discuss the mobilisation of management knowledge in health care, drawing on six qualitative case studies in a diverse range of health care settings. Drawing on theory about management knowledge and practices’ ‘fit’, and emergent theory... more
We discuss the mobilisation of management knowledge in health care, drawing on six qualitative case studies in a diverse range of health care settings. Drawing on theory about management knowledge and practices’ ‘fit’, and emergent theory about ‘epistemic stances’, we explain how cultural/institutional, political and epistemic fit and clashes between the norms, interests and epistemic stances of different communities affected knowledge mobilisation in these settings. We also highlight the key role of knowledge brokers in ‘fitting’ knowledge within contexts as part of their own identity work. Yet we note that knowledge brokers’ ability to mobilise and fit knowledge depended on having a senior role or senior level support, and credibility/legitimacy with dominant communities. We suggest that our novel concepts of ‘epistemic fit’ and ‘fitting’ are useful in explaining the process of knowledge mobilisation, particularly in complex pluralistic health care contexts containing multiple epi...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
How and why do employees from heterogeneous professional and occupational groups respond to the same HR practice differently—job redesign—and what is the implication of this for human resource management (HRM) implementation? Drawing upon... more
How and why do employees from heterogeneous professional and occupational groups respond to the same HR practice differently—job redesign—and what is the implication of this for human resource management (HRM) implementation? Drawing upon a qualitative case study of job redesign in the English health and social care sector, affecting three distinct groups of employees, we highlight the different ways these employees respond to the implementation of job redesign over time. We contribute to a nascent literature discussing employees' role in HRM implementation. We also show that different types of professionals (occupational professionals, paraprofessionals, and organisational professionals) respond to job redesign differently, depending on its impact on their professional identity, which, in turn, affects its implementation.
Research Interests:
Leadership development and its effectiveness has not been explored in depth across university settings. Few studies link leadership development programmes to organisational outcomes in Higher Education (HE) or performance assessment... more
Leadership development and its effectiveness has not been explored in depth across university settings. Few studies link leadership development programmes to organisational outcomes in Higher Education (HE) or performance assessment exercises, such as the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF). This review explores what is known in the area of the impact of leadership development in HE settings and offers a contribution to further thinking in this field.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
We discuss the mobilisation of management knowledge in health care, drawing on six qualitative case studies in a diverse range of health care settings. Drawing on theory about management knowledge and practices’ ‘fit’, and emergent theory... more
We discuss the mobilisation of management knowledge in health care, drawing on six qualitative case studies in a diverse range of health care settings. Drawing on theory about management knowledge and practices’ ‘fit’, and emergent theory about ‘epistemic stances’, we explain how cultural/institutional, political and epistemic fit and clashes between the norms, interests and epistemic stances of different communities affected knowledge mobilisation in these settings. We also highlight the key role of knowledge brokers in ‘fitting’ knowledge within contexts as part of their own identity work. Yet we note that knowledge brokers’ ability to mobilise and fit knowledge depended on having a senior role or senior level support, and credibility/legitimacy with dominant communities. We suggest that our novel concepts of ‘epistemic fit’ and ‘fitting’ are useful in explaining the process of knowledge mobilisation, particularly in complex pluralistic health care contexts containing multiple epi...
Research Interests:
BackgroundCrises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, risk overwhelming health and social care systems. As part of their responses to a critical situation, healthcare professionals necessarily improvise. Some of these local improvisations have... more
BackgroundCrises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, risk overwhelming health and social care systems. As part of their responses to a critical situation, healthcare professionals necessarily improvise. Some of these local improvisations have the potential to contribute to important innovations for health and social care systems with relevance beyond the particular service area and crisis in which they were developed.FindingsThis paper explores some key drivers of improvised innovation that may arise in response to a crisis. We highlight how services that are not considered immediate priorities may also emerge as especially fertile areas in this respect.ConclusionHealth managers and policymakers should monitor crisis-induced improvisations to counteract the potential deterioration of non-prioritised services and to identify and share useful innovations. This will be crucial as health and social care systems around the world recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and head into another potent...
Research Interests:
How and why do employees from heterogeneous professional and occupational groups respond to the same HR practice differently—job redesign—and what is the implication of this for human resource management (HRM) implementation? Drawing upon... more
How and why do employees from heterogeneous professional and occupational groups respond to the same HR practice differently—job redesign—and what is the implication of this for human resource management (HRM) implementation? Drawing upon a qualitative case study of job redesign in the English health and social care sector, affecting three distinct groups of employees, we highlight the different ways these employees respond to the implementation of job redesign over time. We contribute to a nascent literature discussing employees' role in HRM implementation. We also show that different types of professionals (occupational professionals, paraprofessionals, and organisational professionals) respond to job redesign differently, depending on its impact on their professional identity, which, in turn, affects its implementation.
Research Interests:
IntroductionLeadership, and the role of a Chief Executive in healthcare organisations, has never been more important. This review provides one of the first retrospective cross-sectional analyses of the developmental journeys of chief... more
IntroductionLeadership, and the role of a Chief Executive in healthcare organisations, has never been more important. This review provides one of the first retrospective cross-sectional analyses of the developmental journeys of chief executives within the National Health Service (NHS).MethodsTwenty-eight semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with medical, clinical and non-clinical NHS chief executives from the Health Service Journal’s list of ‘Top Chief Executives’ 2014–2018. Through a thematic analysis of their narratives, lessons for the development of aspiring NHS chief executives emerge.ResultsFew proactively sought leadership opportunities and there was a lack of an active leadership development strategy. Yet the ‘seeds of leadership development’ took root early. Combined with a blended approach of formal leadership development and ‘on-the-job’ informal leadership development, emerging NHS chief executives were exposed to multiple ‘crucible moments’ that helped ...
Research Interests:
Managed networks are increasingly common in the British National Health Service (NHS) as a means of streamlining and standardizing patient care across organizational and professional boundaries. However, there has been limited research... more
Managed networks are increasingly common in the British National Health Service (NHS) as a means of streamlining and standardizing patient care across organizational and professional boundaries. However, there has been limited research regarding whether this technique is the most appropriate management style for delivery of health services. This article draws upon the authors' research on managed clinical networks for cancer in the UK–a model that set out to guide and develop knowledge flows across cancer service providers. It examines how the initial purpose of these networks was distorted by the broader function of New Labour's ‘modernization agenda’, which has ultimately focused on organizational restructuring and adhering to government targets. Our analysis, which develops Lozeau, Langley and Denis's model of the corruption of managerial techniques, suggests that the initial knowledge-sharing purpose of networks underwent top-down ‘distortion’ by the demands of central government. This resulted in superficial bottom-up adoption of the networks model and limited impact upon organizational processes.
Research Interests:
BackgroundCrises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, risk overwhelming health and social care systems. As part of their responses to a critical situation, healthcare professionals necessarily improvise. Some of these local improvisations have... more
BackgroundCrises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, risk overwhelming health and social care systems. As part of their responses to a critical situation, healthcare professionals necessarily improvise. Some of these local improvisations have the potential to contribute to important innovations for health and social care systems with relevance beyond the particular service area and crisis in which they were developed.FindingsThis paper explores some key drivers of improvised innovation that may arise in response to a crisis. We highlight how services that are not considered immediate priorities may also emerge as especially fertile areas in this respect.ConclusionHealth managers and policymakers should monitor crisis-induced improvisations to counteract the potential deterioration of non-prioritised services and to identify and share useful innovations. This will be crucial as health and social care systems around the world recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and head into another potent...
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Business and Health Care
IntroductionLeadership, and the role of a Chief Executive in healthcare organisations, has never been more important. This review provides one of the first retrospective cross-sectional analyses of the developmental journeys of chief... more
IntroductionLeadership, and the role of a Chief Executive in healthcare organisations, has never been more important. This review provides one of the first retrospective cross-sectional analyses of the developmental journeys of chief executives within the National Health Service (NHS).MethodsTwenty-eight semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with medical, clinical and non-clinical NHS chief executives from the Health Service Journal’s list of ‘Top Chief Executives’ 2014–2018. Through a thematic analysis of their narratives, lessons for the development of aspiring NHS chief executives emerge.ResultsFew proactively sought leadership opportunities and there was a lack of an active leadership development strategy. Yet the ‘seeds of leadership development’ took root early. Combined with a blended approach of formal leadership development and ‘on-the-job’ informal leadership development, emerging NHS chief executives were exposed to multiple ‘crucible moments’ that helped ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the way “hybrid” clinical managers in Kenyan public hospitals interpret and enact hybrid clinical managerial roles in complex healthcare settings affected by professional, managerial and... more
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the way “hybrid” clinical managers in Kenyan public hospitals interpret and enact hybrid clinical managerial roles in complex healthcare settings affected by professional, managerial and practical norms.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a case study of two Kenyan district hospitals, involving repeated interviews with eight mid-level clinical managers complemented by interviews with 51 frontline workers and 6 senior managers, and 480 h of ethnographic field observations. The authors analysed and theorised data by combining inductive and deductive approaches in an iterative cycle.FindingsKenyan hybrid clinical managers were unprepared for managerial roles and mostly reluctant to do them. Therefore, hybrids’ understandings and enactment of their roles was determined by strong professional norms, official hospital management norms (perceived to be dysfunctional and unsupportive) and local practical norms developed in response...
Research Interests:
Leadership development and its effectiveness has not been explored in depth across university settings. Few studies link leadership development programmes to organisational outcomes in Higher Education (HE) or performance assessment... more
Leadership development and its effectiveness has not been explored in depth across university settings. Few studies link leadership development programmes to organisational outcomes in Higher Education (HE) or performance assessment exercises, such as the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF). This review explores what is known in the area of the impact of leadership development in HE settings and offers a contribution to further thinking in this field.
Research Interests:
We discuss the mobilisation of management knowledge in health care, drawing on six qualitative case studies in a diverse range of health care settings. Drawing on theory about management knowledge and practices’ ‘fit’, and emergent theory... more
We discuss the mobilisation of management knowledge in health care, drawing on six qualitative case studies in a diverse range of health care settings. Drawing on theory about management knowledge and practices’ ‘fit’, and emergent theory about ‘epistemic stances’, we explain how cultural/institutional, political and epistemic fit and clashes between the norms, interests and epistemic stances of different communities affected knowledge mobilisation in these settings. We also highlight the key role of knowledge brokers in ‘fitting’ knowledge within contexts as part of their own identity work. Yet we note that knowledge brokers’ ability to mobilise and fit knowledge depended on having a senior role or senior level support, and credibility/legitimacy with dominant communities. We suggest that our novel concepts of ‘epistemic fit’ and ‘fitting’ are useful in explaining the process of knowledge mobilisation, particularly in complex pluralistic health care contexts containing multiple epi...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
How and why do employees from heterogeneous professional and occupational groups respond to the same HR practice differently—job redesign—and what is the implication of this for human resource management (HRM) implementation? Drawing upon... more
How and why do employees from heterogeneous professional and occupational groups respond to the same HR practice differently—job redesign—and what is the implication of this for human resource management (HRM) implementation? Drawing upon a qualitative case study of job redesign in the English health and social care sector, affecting three distinct groups of employees, we highlight the different ways these employees respond to the implementation of job redesign over time. We contribute to a nascent literature discussing employees' role in HRM implementation. We also show that different types of professionals (occupational professionals, paraprofessionals, and organisational professionals) respond to job redesign differently, depending on its impact on their professional identity, which, in turn, affects its implementation.
Research Interests:
This chapter explores, in greater depth, the idea floated in the Introduction that the macro-level political economy of public services reform can exert effects on preferred management knowledges at both national and local levels. We... more
This chapter explores, in greater depth, the idea floated in the Introduction that the macro-level political economy of public services reform can exert effects on preferred management knowledges at both national and local levels. We argue that an important series of New Public Management reforms evident since the 1980s have made UK public agencies more ‘firm like’ and receptive to firm-based forms of management knowledge. We characterize key features of the UK’s long-term public management reform strategy, benchmarking it against, and also adding to, Pollitt and Bouckaert’s well-known comparativist typology. We specifically add to their model a consideration of the extent to which public management reform is constructed as a top-level political issue.
Research Interests:
BackgroundCrises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, risk overwhelming health and social care systems. As part of their responses to a critical situation, healthcare professionals necessarily improvise. Some of these local improvisations have... more
BackgroundCrises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, risk overwhelming health and social care systems. As part of their responses to a critical situation, healthcare professionals necessarily improvise. Some of these local improvisations have the potential to contribute to important innovations for health and social care systems with relevance beyond the particular service area and crisis in which they were developed.FindingsThis paper explores some key drivers of improvised innovation that may arise in response to a crisis. We highlight how services that are not considered immediate priorities may also emerge as especially fertile areas in this respect.ConclusionHealth managers and policymakers should monitor crisis-induced improvisations to counteract the potential deterioration of non-prioritised services and to identify and share useful innovations. This will be crucial as health and social care systems around the world recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and head into another potent...
Research Interests:
The chapter discusses management consultants and consulting knowledge in health care, highlighting significant expenditure on consultancy and how consultants have shaped thinking in public services, which some critics suggest has served... more
The chapter discusses management consultants and consulting knowledge in health care, highlighting significant expenditure on consultancy and how consultants have shaped thinking in public services, which some critics suggest has served consultants’ own (financial) interests. The chapter then discusses the way consultants mobilize management knowledge and frame clients’ problems and solutions. It discusses an empirical case study of a consultancy project to redesign NHS organizations to make substantial ‘efficiency savings’. Here, consultants framed the NHS’s problem and solution, and then imposed an organizational redesign. Local NHS managers and clinicians framed the NHS’s problem differently, doubting the consultants’ framing and proposing redesign, but feeling unable to engage in dialogue about these concerns. Consequently, they engaged with the project in a calculated and defensive way, superficially accepting the redesign while waiting for its implementation to fail. Thus, the...
Research Interests:
This chapter focuses on the importance of the QIPP productivity programme, and the techniques underpinning implementation. It offers a historical analysis of the various phases of QIPP. The chronology indicates that QIPP was originally... more
This chapter focuses on the importance of the QIPP productivity programme, and the techniques underpinning implementation. It offers a historical analysis of the various phases of QIPP. The chronology indicates that QIPP was originally developed in 2009 under a Labour government following the 2008 global financial crisis. QIPP involved three streams of activity: pay restraint and reduced administration costs; lower national tariffs and increased productivity; and system redesign. We note the involvement of external management consultants brought in to advise government. The chapter reviews existing commentaries on QIPP; however, we note that the nature and effects of QIPP have been badly under-researched, despite its major importance. Think tank-based commentaries suggest QIPP relied on crude cost compression, with little evidence of the productivity-enhancing service transformation initially hoped for. The chapter ends by introducing subsequent chapters that explore the career of Q...
Research Interests:
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the way “hybrid” clinical managers in Kenyan public hospitals interpret and enact hybrid clinical managerial roles in complex healthcare settings affected by professional, managerial and... more
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the way “hybrid” clinical managers in Kenyan public hospitals interpret and enact hybrid clinical managerial roles in complex healthcare settings affected by professional, managerial and practical norms.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a case study of two Kenyan district hospitals, involving repeated interviews with eight mid-level clinical managers complemented by interviews with 51 frontline workers and 6 senior managers, and 480 h of ethnographic field observations. The authors analysed and theorised data by combining inductive and deductive approaches in an iterative cycle.FindingsKenyan hybrid clinical managers were unprepared for managerial roles and mostly reluctant to do them. Therefore, hybrids’ understandings and enactment of their roles was determined by strong professional norms, official hospital management norms (perceived to be dysfunctional and unsupportive) and local practical norms developed in response...
Research Interests:
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... more
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 ...
Research Interests: Organizational Behavior, Management, Organizational Theory, Knowledge Management, Leadership, and 15 moreHealth Care, Health Policy, Distributed Leadership, New Public Management, Management Consulting, Hospital Management, Austerity, Healthcare Management, Austerity Measures, Oxford university, Management Knowledge, Knowledge management in public sector, Political Management, Knowledge Leadership, and health care organizations
Research Interests:
This chapter explores how individual knowledge leaders use research-based management knowledge to stimulate organizational and system-level change. Situated within literature on organizational processes and practices, we study empirically... more
This chapter explores how individual knowledge leaders use research-based management knowledge to stimulate organizational and system-level change. Situated within literature on organizational processes and practices, we study empirically how key knowledge leaders, embedded within each of our sites, mobilized research-based knowledge into organizational practices. First, we characterize knowledge leadership tactics, of knowledge transposition by mid-level specialists identified with particular knowledges, who used their local credibility to authoritatively interpret and transpose certain texts into organizational practices. Secondly, senior leaders’ appropriation and synthesis of texts was used to produce an assemblage of actors, materials, and techniques that powerfully shaped organizational narratives and projects. Overall, we argue that knowledge leadership entails effortful processes of imbuing texts with emotions, identities, and politics to mobilize locally significant ‘textua...
Research Interests:
This chapter explores, in greater depth, the idea floated in the Introduction that the macro-level political economy of public services reform can exert effects on preferred management knowledges at both national and local levels. We... more
This chapter explores, in greater depth, the idea floated in the Introduction that the macro-level political economy of public services reform can exert effects on preferred management knowledges at both national and local levels. We argue that an important series of New Public Management reforms evident since the 1980s have made UK public agencies more ‘firm like’ and receptive to firm-based forms of management knowledge. We characterize key features of the UK’s long-term public management reform strategy, benchmarking it against, and also adding to, Pollitt and Bouckaert’s well-known comparativist typology. We specifically add to their model a consideration of the extent to which public management reform is constructed as a top-level political issue.
Research Interests:
This chapter characterizes the overall strategy of public services reform apparent in England after the global financial crisis of 2008 and during the period of the UK’s Coalition government 2010–15. It argues that what can be termed a... more
This chapter characterizes the overall strategy of public services reform apparent in England after the global financial crisis of 2008 and during the period of the UK’s Coalition government 2010–15. It argues that what can be termed a ‘proto narrative’ of reform, orientated around so-called ‘Big Society’ ideas, emerged around 2010. However, we argue it was trumped in the end by Treasury-led and New Public Management-friendly austerity discourse. The concrete example is taken of the health policy to form new clinical commissioning groups in the primary care sector. They were presented as a mechanism which could promote professional engagement in commissioning. However, they were soon subjected to top-down performance management pressures and systems, including strong attempts to prevent financial deficits from emerging at a local level, which eroded bottom-up and professionally driven innovation. We conclude that the Big Society proto reform narrative failed to consolidate itself.
Research Interests:
The chapter discusses management consultants and consulting knowledge in health care, highlighting significant expenditure on consultancy and how consultants have shaped thinking in public services, which some critics suggest has served... more
The chapter discusses management consultants and consulting knowledge in health care, highlighting significant expenditure on consultancy and how consultants have shaped thinking in public services, which some critics suggest has served consultants’ own (financial) interests. The chapter then discusses the way consultants mobilize management knowledge and frame clients’ problems and solutions. It discusses an empirical case study of a consultancy project to redesign NHS organizations to make substantial ‘efficiency savings’. Here, consultants framed the NHS’s problem and solution, and then imposed an organizational redesign. Local NHS managers and clinicians framed the NHS’s problem differently, doubting the consultants’ framing and proposing redesign, but feeling unable to engage in dialogue about these concerns. Consequently, they engaged with the project in a calculated and defensive way, superficially accepting the redesign while waiting for its implementation to fail. Thus, the...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This chapter focuses on the importance of the QIPP productivity programme, and the techniques underpinning implementation. It offers a historical analysis of the various phases of QIPP. The chronology indicates that QIPP was originally... more
This chapter focuses on the importance of the QIPP productivity programme, and the techniques underpinning implementation. It offers a historical analysis of the various phases of QIPP. The chronology indicates that QIPP was originally developed in 2009 under a Labour government following the 2008 global financial crisis. QIPP involved three streams of activity: pay restraint and reduced administration costs; lower national tariffs and increased productivity; and system redesign. We note the involvement of external management consultants brought in to advise government. The chapter reviews existing commentaries on QIPP; however, we note that the nature and effects of QIPP have been badly under-researched, despite its major importance. Think tank-based commentaries suggest QIPP relied on crude cost compression, with little evidence of the productivity-enhancing service transformation initially hoped for. The chapter ends by introducing subsequent chapters that explore the career of Q...
Research Interests:
In this article, we discuss temporal work and temporal politics situated between groups with different temporal orientations, arguing that attention needs to be paid to covert and unarticulated silent politics during temporal work.... more
In this article, we discuss temporal work and temporal politics situated between groups with different temporal orientations, arguing that attention needs to be paid to covert and unarticulated silent politics during temporal work. Drawing on a case study of a management consultancy project to redesign public health care, we explain how unarticulated temporal interests and orientations shape the construction of problems, which, in turn, legitimate tasks and time frames. We also show how task and time frames are temporarily fixed and imposed through boundary objects, and the way these may then be reinterpreted and co-opted to deflect pressure to change. Thus, we argue, unarticulated, covert and political temporal inter-dynamics produce expedient provisional temporal settlements, which resolve conflict in the short term, while perpetuating it in the longer run.
Research Interests: Sociology, Public Administration, Organizational Change, Project Management, Conflict, and 15 moreHealth Care, Politics, Organization Studies, Philosophy of Time, Public Health, Consulting, Health Care Management, Boundary objects, Management Consulting, Business and Management, Projects, Covert, Situated, Project Based Organization, and Public Policy
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... more
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 ...
Research Interests: Organizational Behavior, Management, Organizational Theory, Knowledge Management, Leadership, and 15 moreHealth Care, Health Policy, Distributed Leadership, New Public Management, Management Consulting, Hospital Management, Austerity, Healthcare Management, Austerity Measures, Oxford university, Management Knowledge, Knowledge management in public sector, Political Management, Knowledge Leadership, and health care organizations
This article explores contrasting forms of ‘knowledge leadership’ in mobilizing management research into organizational practice. Drawing on a Foucauldian perspective on power–knowledge, we introduce three axes of power–knowledge... more
This article explores contrasting forms of ‘knowledge leadership’ in mobilizing management research into organizational practice. Drawing on a Foucauldian perspective on power–knowledge, we introduce three axes of power–knowledge relations, through which we analyse knowledge leadership practices. We present empirical case study data focused on ‘polar cases’ of managers engaged in mobilizing management research in six research-intensive organizations in the UK healthcare sector. We find that knowledge leadership involves agentic practices through which managers strive to actively become the knowledge object – personally transposing, appropriating or contending management research. This article contributes to the literature by advancing the concept of knowledge leadership in the work of mobilizing management research into organizational practice.