The last two decades have seen a shift in public services organizations from hierarchies to networks. Network forms are seen as particularly suited to handling ‘wicked problems'. We make an assessment of the nature and impact of this shift. Using recent evidence from the United Kingdom (UK)...

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 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...

We examine the ‘identity work’ of manager–professional ‘hybrids’, specifically medical professionals in managerial roles in the British National Health Service, to maintain and hybridize their professional identity and wider professionalism in organizational and policy contexts...

This article explores contrasting forms of ‘knowledge leadership’ in mobilising management research into organizational practice. Drawing on a Foucauldian perspective on power-knowledge, we introduce three axes of power-knowledge relations, through which we analyse knowledge leadership...

Have generic management texts and associated knowledges now extensively diffused into public services organizations? If so, why? Our empirical study of English healthcare organizations detects an extensive presence of such texts. We argue that their ready diffusion relates to two macro-level...