With increased possibility that public healthcare services in the UK will be out-sourced to the private sector, this study investigates how clinicians working in Independent Sector Treatment Centres perceive the differences between public and private sectors.

This paper presents an ethnographic account of the implementation of Lean service redesign methodologies in one UK NHS hospital operating department. It is suggested that this popular management 'technology', with its emphasis on creating value streams and reducing waste, has the potential to...

Purpose – This paper seeks to identify the instances of informal knowledge sharing at the “backstage” of the clinical environment and to demonstrate their contribution to organisational learning and patient safety. Design/methodology/approach – The approach takes the form of an...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of recent outsourcing and public‐private partnership (PPPs) arrangements on the consistency of professional employment in health care. Design/methodology/approach – A case study methodology is applied. Findings – The paper...

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to examine the benefits of undertaking mixed methods social network analysis (SNA) to investigate patterns of interpersonal relationships in healthcare delivery. Although SNA has roots in anthropological and ethnographic research, recent emphasis has been on...