Partnership on Prescription in the NHS

Abstract

Labour governments since 1997 have embraced ‘partnership at work’ as central to their agenda for industrial relations ‘modernisation’. Their efforts to influence private sector employers’ practices have been criticised as light touch (e.g. Terry, 2003). A heavier hand has been applied in the public services sector, however, and in the NHS in particular, in the context of the reforms Labour ministers have rolled out under the banner of NHS ‘modernisation’ (Martínez Lucio and Stuart, 2002). It is, therefore, relevant to ask whether NHS employees have experienced partnership as increased direct and union-mediated involvement in organisational decision-making, or simply as exhortation to be more hard working and committed to employer and government-prescribed service improvement targets. In this chapter, we use ‘evidence based research’ amassed at one NHS hospital trust in 2002 to explore employees’ experiences of the staff involvement and partnership working agenda that the Department of Health developed from the late 1990s.