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New study to focus on NHS frontline and middle managers

How do middle and frontline hospital managers handle the pressures and demands of a constantly changing health service? And what effect does their management practice have on the quality of patient care and clinical outcomes? These are questions that a new study by Cranfield School of Management in conjunction with Cranfield Health will set out to answer.

Cranfield School of Management and Cranfield Health have been awarded a major research grant from the NHS National Institute for Health Research, Service Delivery and Organisation Research Programme to fund the 3 year project 'How do they manage?'.

Officially launched last week at the Cranfield campus, the project in collaboration with six acute hospital trusts, is aiming to explore the realities of today's middle and front line management work in healthcare to provide key insights and practical guidance for the development of management in acute health settings.

Principal investigator on the project, professor David Buchanan, chair in organisational behaviour at Cranfield School of Management commented: "This is the first project of its kind to look at middle management within the NHS. Previous studies have looked only at senior level managers, therefore we know surprisingly little about the attitudes of frontline hospital managers, but when things go wrong this is the group which usually takes the blame."

"We have already begun by asking middle and front line managers to feed into the design of the surveys we will be conducting. As they are one of the main consumers of the findings from this project, we felt it imperative to involve them at this early stage to benefit from their insights in our approach and to hear their expectations of useable outputs."

The research is seeking to identify management practices and organisational features that contribute to improved quality of care and clinical outcomes. It is also aiming to address the recognised challenge of embedding rapid changes to working practices following serious 'extreme' events.

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