ABSTRACT

At a time of growing pressure on health and social care services, this book draws together contributions which highlight contemporary challenges for their management. Providing a range of contributions that draw on a Critical Management Studies perspective the book raises macro-level concerns with theory, demographics and economics on the one hand, as well as micro-level challenges of leadership, voice and engagement on the other. Rather than being an attempt to define the ‘wickedness’ of problems in this field, this book provides new insights designed to be of interest and value to researchers, students and managers.

Contributions from international researchers explore four main topics:

    • identifying contemporary challenges in health and social care;
    • managing, leading and following;

    • listening to silent voices in delivering change; and
    • new methodologies for understanding care challenges.

The concerns discussed in this volume are ‘wicked’ in so far as they are persistent, pernicious and beyond the curative abilities of any single organisation or profession. Such problems require collaboration but also new approaches to listening to those who suffer their effects. This book demonstrates such listening through its engagement with policy makers, leaders, followers, professions, patients, forgotten groups and silenced voices. Moreover, it considers how future research might be transformed so as to shine a more inclusive light on ‘wicked’ problems and their amelioration. This is a timely and engaging book that challenges you – the reader – to think again about how we should look at, engage with and support all those involved in health and social care.

section 1|48 pages

Contemporary Wicked Challenges to Health and Social Care

chapter 1|18 pages

The Concept of Wicked Problems

Improving the Understanding of Managing Problem Wickedness in Health and Social Care

chapter 2|13 pages

The Politics of Care

Wicked Concerns Constituent in Care Reforms

chapter 3|15 pages

Personalization of Care

A Wicked Problem or a Wicked Solution?

section 2|68 pages

Managing, Leading and Following

section 3|60 pages

Silent Voices

chapter 11|12 pages

Deficit Discourses and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Disadvantage

A Wicked Problem in Australian Indigenous Policy?

chapter 12|17 pages

Unpacking Dependency; Managing ‘Becoming’

Supporting the Experiences of Patients Living with Chronic Disease

section 4|73 pages

Beyond Conventional Methodologies for Understanding Wicked Challenges

chapter 13|15 pages

Improving Young People’s Mental Health?

Understanding Ambivalence to Seeking Support among Young Adults with Asperger Syndrome

chapter 14|17 pages

Action Research in the Health and Social Care Settings

A Tool for Solving Wicked Problems? 1