A commentary on decision-making and organisational legitimacy in the Risk Society.

Making Research Matter; Comment on “Public Spending on Health Service and Policy Research in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States: A Modest Proposal”

We offer a UK-based commentary on the recent “Perspective” published in IJHPM by Thakkar and Sullivan. We are sympathetic to the authors’ call for increased funding for health service and policy research (HSPR). However, we point out that increasing that investment – in any of the three countries they compare: Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom– will ipso facto not necessarily lea...

A Supply - Scarcity and Strategic Decision-Making Angle: High Performance Work Practices in Small Firms

High performance work practices (HPWPs) are human resource management practices aimed at stimulating employee and organisational performance. The application of HPWPs is not widespread in small organisations. We examine whether the implementation of coherent bundles of HPWPs (aimed at employee ability, employee motivation or at the opportunity to perform) depends on the scarcity of resources, a...

Inside the Black Box: Organisational Buying Behaviour and Strategic Purchasing in Healthcare: A Response to Recent Commentary

Decisions of Value: Going Backstage; Comment on “Contextual Factors Influencing Cost and Quality Decisions in Health and Care: A Structured Evidence Review and Narrative Synthesis”

This commentary expands on two of the key themes briefly raised in the paper involving analysis of the evidence about key contextual influences on decisions of value. The first theme focuses on the need to explore in more detail what is called backstage decision-making looking at how actual decisions are made drawing on evidence from ethnographies about decision-making. These studies point to l...

A Safety-II Perspective on Organisational Learning in Healthcare Organisations; Comment on “False Dawns and New Horizons in Patient Safety Research and Practice”

In their recent editorial Mannion and Braithwaite provide an insightful critique of traditional patient safety improvement efforts, and offer a powerful alternative vision based on Safety-II thinking that has the potential to radically transform the way we approach patient safety. In this commentary, I explore how the Safety-II perspective points to new directions for organisational learning in...