This article focuses on the pattern and impact of change leadership in complex, pluralistic, public sector settings, and specifically in English healthcare. The argument draws on evidence from ten comparative cases, exploring links between leadership patterns and organizational outcomes. Our...

This article illustrates how distributed change agency can implement complex organizational changes in the absence of formal management plans, roles, and structures. Distributed change agency typically involves small teams and senior groups. In this qualitative study of service improvements in...

This article uses the stream of literature relating to receptive contexts for change to explore the variations in progress on change implementation between different organisations within healthcare. The aim of the article is to develop our understanding of change processes as they unfold in...

In this paper we explore how the implementation of public policy can differ from that mandated, and we argue that such departures are not necessarily a problem. Organizational change faces theoretical tension between considering non-acceptance behaviours as ‘resistance’ and requiring change...

Why do some organizational changes persist, while others decay? The sustainability of change can be defined broadly as the process through which new working methods, performance goals and improvement trajectories are maintained for a period appropriate to a given context. However, sustainability...

Traditional modes of researching health service practice and policy have been criticised in terms of timeliness and relevance by potential users, and of poor uptake by researchers themselves. Newer models, based on principles of collaboration and integration, are being used in some healthcare...