Skip navigation

Engaging professionals in sustainable workplace innovation: Medical doctors and institutional Work

Engaging professionals in sustainable workplace innovation: Medical doctors and institutional Work

Bartram, Timothy, Stanton, Pauline, Bamber, Greg J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6646-3065, Leggat, Sandra G., Ballardie, Ruth and Gough, Richard (2018) Engaging professionals in sustainable workplace innovation: Medical doctors and institutional Work. British Journal of Management, 31 (1). pp. 42-55. ISSN 1045-3172 (Print), 1467-8551 (Online) (doi:10.1111/1467-8551.12335)

[thumbnail of Publisher's PDF - Open Access]
Preview
PDF (Publisher's PDF - Open Access)
23485 BALLARDIE_Engaging_Professionals_in_Sustainable_Workplace_Innovation_(OA)_2018.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

Download (350kB) | Preview

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of medical professionals in the success and longevity of the implementation of workplace innovation and organizational change in the Accident and Emergency (A&E) Departments of two large public hospitals, in Australia and Canada, during the introduction of process improvement using Lean Management (LM) methodologies. We ask why and how doctors resist, influence or enable LM initiatives in healthcare. Using a qualitative methodology, we contribute to institutional work theory by unpacking the complex forms of boundary and practice work undertaken by key actors who effectively use their professional status and power to enable practice changes to be embedded. Our findings lend support to the importance of the involvement and ownership of senior doctors in the design, introduction and implementation of successful workplace innovation and organizational change. Senior doctors use their professional expertise, positional and political power at the industry, organization and workplace levels to influence strategically the use of resources designated for workplace innovation to improve efficiencies, quality of patient care and maintain their dominance. The significant organizational change achieved reflected the ownership and leadership of the workplace innovation by senior doctors in ‘hybrid roles’ who captured the rhetoric and minimized adversarialism among key stakeholders.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © 2018 The Authors. British Journal of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Academy of Management. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Medical professionals; Workplace innovation; Organizational change; Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments
Subjects: H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group: Faculty of Business
Faculty of Business > Department of Human Resources & Organisational Behaviour
Last Modified: 01 May 2020 14:14
URI: http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/23485

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics