Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reflect on social enterprise as an organisational form in health organisation and management. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a critique of the underlying assumptions associated with social enterprise in the context of English health...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the motivations behind public sector spin outs, focusing on the Right to Request policy, which enabled NHS staff to set up their own social enterprises to deliver healthcare services. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on empirical...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the business case for ethnic diversity in the British National Health Service (NHS). It seeks to contextualise issues around diversity within the current political environment, and identify the barriers to diversity in the NHS. The business...

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to examine the issues of decentralisation in the NHS. Design/methodology/approach – Evidence was gathered from an empirical study in order to illustrate the effect of policy reform on relationships at both the central and the local level. In this...

Purpose – This paper draws on economic theory and empirical evidence in order to explore the role of incentives and information in the successful implementation of the new hospital funding system in the NHS. Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on case studies in two strategic...

Purpose – This paper aims to utilise cultural theory of risk to provide a broad analytic framework for examining how risk is constructed within the dominant discourses around patient safety within the domain of psychiatry. It also seeks to examine notions of blame and to consider the...

Purpose – The National Health Service (NHS) Local Improvement Finance Trust (LIFT) programme was launched in 2001 as an innovative public‐private partnership to address the historical under‐investment in local primary care facilities in England. The organisations from the public and...