Reengineering Health Care

Organizations are being urged to experiment with new structures and processes. A 'process perspective' on organizing is emerging as a major challenge to 'functional' principles of organizing established during the last century. Business process reengineering is one exemplar of process thinking that has received great attention amongst organizational theorists and practitioners. This in-depth account of business process reengineering within a major NHS hospital is animportant contribution to the very limited stock of empirical knowledge about new organizational forms, especially in the public sector. The book combines empirical data gatheredthrough an intensive, comparative case study method with strategic choice and neo-institutional theories to analyse the changing context of public organizations, importation of models of organizing from private to public organizations, and dynamics of public sector transformation. The outcomes of the change programme add to our more general organizational knowledge about (a) the impact of corporate change programmes, particularly in professionalized and public sector settings, (b) impedimentsand enablers of lateral organizing structures and processes, and (c) contradictions within the New Public Management between functional and process principles for organizing.

“Winner of the British Association of Medical Managers Medical Management Book of the Year Award 2004”

Review from previous edition Reengineering Health Care is an important addition to the theory and practice of health policy and management. This book is a must read for students and teachers but a jargon free summary would ensure that it reaches the wide audience it deserves.'Chris Ham, Strategy Department Department of HealthA valuable and authoritative addition to the literature ...wide-ranging and scholarly theoretical framework, and the use of the empirical findings to contribute further to theory development, are the book's great strengths ... This book will have lasting value well beyond re-engineering itself.'Health Services Management ResearchOverall, I think this book could make a significant contribution to an informed consideration of the practice of change management in the NHS/public services ... I think the work stands up to the test of the times all too well.'Public AdministrationTerry McNulty and Ewan Ferlie describe insightfully how managing within [NHS] markets is complex and slow'Times Higher Educational Supplement

Terry McNulty is Senior Lecturer in Organization Behaviour at Leeds University Business School. Previously he was a senior research fellow at Warwick Business School. He has also worked in the National Health Service and for the Institute of Health Services Management. His teaching and research cover processes of organizing and change in public and private sector organizations. His research has been published in leading practitioner and scholarly journals includingOrganisation Studies, European Journal of Work and Organisational Psychology, Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, and Corporate Governance. Ewan Ferlie is Professor of Management and Headof Department at the School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London. Prior to this he was Director of Research and Professor of Public Services Management at Imperial College Management School, and has held research posts at the Personal Social Services Research Unit, University of Kent at Canterbury, and was Deputy Director of the Centre for Corporate Strategy and Change at Warwick Business School. He has also been a Non Executive Member on Warwickshire Health Authority (1993-6).

Organizations are being urged to experiment with new structures and processes. A 'process perspective' on organizing is emerging as a major challenge to 'functional' principles of organizing established during the last century. Business process reengineering is one exemplar of process thinking that has received great attention amongst organizational theorists and practitioners. This in-depth account of business process reengineering within a major NHS hospital is an important contribution to the very limited stock of empirical knowledge about new organizational forms, especially in the public sector. The book combines empirical data gathered through an intensive, comparative case study method with strategic choice and neo-institutional theories to analyse the changing context of public organizations, importation of models of organizing from private to public organizations, and dynamics of public sector transformation. The outcomes of the change programme add to our more general organizational knowledge about (a) the impact of corporate change programmes, particularly in professionalized and public sector settings, (b) impediments and enablers of lateral organizing structures and processes, and (c) contradictions within the New Public Management between functional and process principles for organizing.

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