The Oxford Handbook of Health Care Management

This Handbook provides an authoritative overview of current issues and debates in the field of health care management. It contains over twenty chapters from well-known and eminent academic authors, who were carefully selected for their expertise and asked to provide a broad and critical overview of developments in their particular topic area. The development of an international perspective and body of knowledge is a key feature of the book.

The Handbook secondly makes a case for bringing back a social science perspective into the study of the field of health care management. It therefore contains a number of contrasting and theoretically orientated chapters (e.g. on institutionalism; critical management studies). This social science based approach is a refreshing alternative to much existing work in this domain and offers a good way into current academic debates in this field.

The Handbook thirdly explores a variety of important policy and organizational developments apparent within the current health care field (e.g. new organizational forms; growth of management consulting in health care organizations). It therefore explores and comments on major contemporary trends apparent in the practice field.

Ewan Ferlie, Professor of Public Services Management, King's College London,Kathleen Montgomery,Professor of the Graduate Division, University of California, Riverside,Anne Reff Pedersen,Associate Professor, Copenhagen Business School

Ewan Ferlie is Professor of Public Services Management at King's College London. He has published widely on themes of organizational change and restructuring in public services organizations, especially in health care and also in higher education. He also writes on the relationship between professionals and managers in health care. He previously co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Public Management. He is currently Hon Chair of the Society for the Study of Organizing in Health Care, a Learned Society which is a constituent member of the UK Academy of Social Sciences.

Kathleen Montgomery is Professor of the Graduate Division and Emerita Professor of Organizations and Management at the University of California, Riverside. She has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University, Stanford, UCLA, and University of Sydney. She is a Past Chair of the Health Care Management Division of the Academy of Management. She earned a PhD in sociology from New York University, where she worked with Eliot Freidson and began her research on the medical profession and relationships between professionals and their environment. Her current research continues this steam, now focusing on issues of trust, integrity, and behavioral norms.

Anne Reff Pedersen is Associate Professor at Department of Organization at Copenhagen Business School. Her research field is organizational studies with a particular interest in Health Care Management and on organization theory and organizational ethnography. She has published articles in Organization, American Review of Public Administration, Management and Management Learning and she has published several books about organizational change, public mangers and management through the patient. She works currently in a research project about health care innovation with a special interest on change practices.