Serial: Community Mental Health Team Formation

Abstract

The primary purpose of this chapter is to answer the question ‘Do managers construct reform as working for them and service users?’ and to do that by looking at one specific reform, that of the community mental health teams (CMHT) formation. After the localised stories of change I turn to a specific serial of change. The analogy of the serial in the context of public-sector change, according to Czarniawska (1997), can be viewed as changes that are being freshly introduced and in this way we can observe the characters and themes evolving just as in a TV soap opera.

A serial does not have any plot, it consists of related episodes (instalments) that both vary and are repeated. A serial does not contain any solution — the point is that it can continue forever. Organisational change of various kinds can be regarded as serials of this type. Public Sector change could especially be seen to follow the serial mode, with apparently unsolvable and paradoxical problems providing endless material for fresh episodes! (Czarniawska 1997: 78).