Implementing local pay: rhetorically analysing irritation

Examines the introduction of local pay bargaining in a National Health Service Trust. The focus of the article is the irritation experienced by a senior manager responsible for its implementation and operation. Rhetorically deconstructs the manager’s exasperation, highlighting in the process the contingent organizational world he operates within, as well as the manager’s monologic solution to the justified concerns of health professionals about the potentially damaging effects of local pay.