Background In response to policy recommendations, nine National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRCs) were established in England in 2008, aiming to create closer working between the health service and higher education...

Purpose: Organisations within healthcare increasingly operate in rapidly changing environments and present wide variation in performance. It can be argued that this variation is influenced by the capability of an organisation to improve: its improvement capability. However, there is little...