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Sustaining Healthcare Service Improvements Without Collective Dialogue and Participation: A Route to Partial Failure?

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Managing Improvement in Healthcare

Part of the book series: Organizational Behaviour in Health Care ((OBHC))

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Abstract

This chapter explores the implications of trade unions not being formally involved in local service improvements in the NHS (England) over the last decade. This is despite their involvement in the largest pay modernisation in the NHS (Buchan and Evans 2007) and national level collective bargaining (Bach and Kessler 2012). This chapter draws on evidence from three national government-funded initiatives to illustrate the crowding out of collective dialogue, and concludes that such actions undermine the sustainability of service improvements and increase the potential for ‘partial failure’ (Hyman 1987, p. 30). This highlights the contradictory nature of management more generally in accepting the co-ordinating role of trade unions while eschewing the perceived critique of managerial objectives from which it could ultimately benefit.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Bacon and Samuel (2017) provide evidence of different forms of union participation in NHS Scotland and Wales.

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Acknowledgements

This chapter is based on research gathered through three funded projects: an evaluation of the Changing Workforce Programme commissioned by the Department of Health, Research Policy Programme; a study of Skills Escalator activities commissioned by the Department of Health, Policy Research Programme; and the NIHR CLAHRC for Greater Manchester, funded by the NIHR and a number of primary care trusts in Greater Manchester. The views and opinions in the chapter do not necessarily reflect those of the NHS, the Department of Health or the NIHR.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Anne McBride & Miguel Martínez-Lucio

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  1. Anne McBride
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  2. Miguel Martínez-Lucio
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Correspondence to Anne McBride .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom

    Aoife M. McDermott

  2. Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom

    Martin Kitchener

  3. Health Services Management Centre, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom

    Mark Exworthy

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McBride, A., Martínez-Lucio, M. (2018). Sustaining Healthcare Service Improvements Without Collective Dialogue and Participation: A Route to Partial Failure?. In: McDermott, A., Kitchener, M., Exworthy, M. (eds) Managing Improvement in Healthcare. Organizational Behaviour in Health Care. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62235-4_9

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