ABSTRACT
This research was conducted during a period of rapid large-scale change in public sector healthcare in Britain. The pace and scale of those changes have continued, affecting the overall organization structure of the service and inter-organizational relationships, as well as working practices on ‘the front line’. The team which carried out these studies was employed by the health service, and was based in the Agency, rather than operating as a
conventional external university academic research group. Although the intent was to generate conclusions and recommendations that would have wide applicability across the service, the Agency’s internal funding model clearly identified ‘customers’ for the findings of the specific projects which they were each supporting. Initially, those customers were the leads for the National Booking Programme and the Cancer Services Collaborative. As the team’s work and output became more widely known, a number of other internal ‘customers’ also requested services in the form of research and evaluation projects. The style and format of the summary reports produced by the team recognized that front line staff were also one of the key target audiences for the research findings and implications.
