ABSTRACT

Twenty years ago, it may have been sufficient for managers to accept what they found, to keep the organisation moving on its existing tracks, to handle occasional deviations, and eventually, when they moved on, to leave things pretty well as they found them. Today, despite tight resources and ever-increasing demands, the primary task for managers of health and social care, at all levels, is to improve the services they provide to service users. Management is no longer about maintaining the status quo (if it ever was); it is about stimulating and implementing change, and encouraging innovation, in order to make improvements.