Management in collaborative and integrated healthcare service systems: concept and practice

Abstract

This study explores how managers are coping within a changing public healthcare service context and how the role of service managers and the nature of Management Development are being transformed. With the public healthcare sector in the UK facing complex challenges including financial constraint and increasing service demand, it is inevitable that collaborative partnership working and service integration are viewed as a means of addressing such challenges.

Using the views and experiences of service managers from Scottish Community Health Care Partnership cases, the study highlights the experiences of managers in relation to partnership working and service integration and explores the potential implications of this for managerial learning, training and development.

The research evidence establishes the importance of changing roles, responsibilities and relationships for managers in a changing healthcare service environment and takes on board a Service-Dominant approach and propositions from New Public Governance theory to explain these and to address attendant issues.

Specifically, the challenges surrounding the learning, training and development of managers in an increasingly integrated services environment are explored and reconceptualised through a Services-as-Systems approach. The outcomes of this study allow for a better understanding of the changing nature of work that managers do and attempts to reframe Management Development in such a context for the future.