Three conceptualizations of hybrid management in hospitals
International Journal of Public Sector Management
ISSN: 0951-3558
Article publication date: 7 July 2014
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to bring the discussion on the relationship between management and medicine a step forward by focussing on: first, how the notion of hybrid and hybridity has been used in the literature on healthcare management. Second, the authors have mapped the alternative ways that the concept have been used in order to conceptualize a more specific set of possible combinations of managerial and professional roles in healthcare management. Hybrid management is a topic that ought to be important for training, communication among researchers and for identifying areas of future research: in management, in healthcare reforms, in sociology of professions and in theory of organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors provide a systematic literature review in order to map the various conceptualizations of hybrid management. The authors have searched for “hybrid leadership,” “hybrid management” combined with hospitals and health care in a whole range of journals, identified in Google scholar, Academic Search Premier, Academic Research Library and Sage Publication. The authors have also used already existing literature reviews. The search has resulted in more than 60 articles and book titles that have been classified according to whether they make a fit with three alternative ways of conceptualizing hybrid management. The authors are aware that they might have missed some relevant literature but the literature included is quite comprehensive.
Findings
In the literature the authors have found three conceptualizations of management. The clinical manager who combines professional self-governance with a general management logic. The commercialized manager who combines professional self-governance with an enterprise logic. The neo-bureaucratic manager who combines self-governance with a neo-bureaucratic logic.
Originality/value
In most analyses of hybridity in management and organization the notion of hybrid has been used in a rather superficial way. By mapping the various uses of hybrid in the literature and suggest how a professional logic may be combined with a set of alternative logics of management the authors provide a platform for developing the concept of hybrid management into a more useful tool for analyses of changes in healthcare management.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Work on this paper was interrupted by the sudden and untimely death of dear co-author and collaborator over many years, Peter Kragh Jespersen. The author have continued the work on the paper in his honor.
Citation
Byrkjeflot, H. and Kragh Jespersen, P. (2014), "Three conceptualizations of hybrid management in hospitals", International Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. 27 No. 5, pp. 441-458. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-12-2012-0162
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited