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Potential challenges facing distributed leadership in health care: evidence from the UK National Health Service.

Authors
  • Martin, Graeme1
  • Beech, Nic
  • MacIntosh, Robert
  • Bushfield, Stacey
  • 1 Graduate School of Natural Resources Law Policy and Management, University of Dundee.
Type
Published Article
Journal
Sociology of health & illness
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2015
Volume
37
Issue
1
Pages
14–29
Identifiers
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9566.12171
PMID: 25529349
Source
Medline
Keywords
Language
English
License
Unknown

Abstract

The discourse of leaderism in health care has been a subject of much academic and practical debate. Recently, distributed leadership (DL) has been adopted as a key strand of policy in the UK National Health Service (NHS). However, there is some confusion over the meaning of DL and uncertainty over its application to clinical and non-clinical staff. This article examines the potential for DL in the NHS by drawing on qualitative data from three co-located health-care organisations that embraced DL as part of their organisational strategy. Recent theorising positions DL as a hybrid model combining focused and dispersed leadership; however, our data raise important challenges for policymakers and senior managers who are implementing such a leadership policy. We show that there are three distinct forms of disconnect and that these pose a significant problem for DL. However, we argue that instead of these disconnects posing a significant problem for the discourse of leaderism, they enable a fantasy of leadership that draws on and supports the discourse. © 2014 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness © 2014 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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