ABSTRACT
The story of high-quality care at the Royal Devon and Exeter (RD&E) NHS Foundation Trust and its Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedics Centre (PEOC), one large clinical department within the organization, demonstrates the distinct importance of organizational ‘identity’. By identity, we mean the collective self-definitions of an organization and the groups within it of ‘who we are’, the collective role ‘we’ play, the distinctive characteristics ‘we’ possess, and the image ‘we’ wish to project,1-3 another immaterial and therefore invisible phenomenon like ‘mindfulness’ in the previous chapter. In particular, this case study highlights the infl uence of organizational identity, subunit identity, and professional identity and how these can sustain the contribution of additional discretionary effort from individuals to tasks that benefi t co-workers and the organization as a whole,4 such as achieving and maintaining high levels of quality and continual QI.
