To read this content please select one of the options below:

A Sustainable Development Agenda for the UK National Health Service (NHS): An Organizational Learning Model for Defining and Supporting Goals

Ecological Health: Society, Ecology and Health

ISBN: 978-1-78190-323-0

Publication date: 16 August 2014

Abstract

Purpose

This chapter presents an organizational learning approach to understanding the objectives and challenges of an National Health Service (NHS) Sustainable Development agenda, which involves the integration of social, ecological and economic concerns into organizational functioning, for example the construction and management of buildings, design and delivery of services, and employment of staff.

Methodology

The approach is used to frame an empirical analysis of 11 Projects conducted by NHS organizations aiming to advance this agenda during a particularly active phase in the mid to late 2000s. The approach helps identify the assumptions of organizational purpose, strategy and practice inherent in proposals for Sustainable Development and expose the challenges these are likely to pose. This framing helps articulate a vision and identify the actor groups, and their guiding assumptions, which need to be engaged if progress is to be made.

Findings

The vision of Sustainable Development being promoted was predominantly one of an NHS contributing to the economic and social determinants of health through its procurement, service development and employment activities. Contributions to environmental determinants only took place where financial gains to the NHS organizations themselves made activities, such as investment in renewable energy, viable in the short-term. Within most Projects strategic tools able to predict and measure benefits had to be developed on-the-job and most received help from external agencies to do this work.

Social implications

Rather than expecting individual NHS organizations to progress this agenda alone, others involved in the shaping of collective assumptions of the NHS' purpose and strategies for growth must be engaged in what can be viewed as a social process of learning.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

All those interviewed for the research documented here, particularly Helen Ross and other members of the SHARP network (Sustainable Health through Action Research in Practice), William Young, and the Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds.

Citation

Marsh, C. (2014), "A Sustainable Development Agenda for the UK National Health Service (NHS): An Organizational Learning Model for Defining and Supporting Goals", Ecological Health: Society, Ecology and Health (Advances in Medical Sociology, Vol. 15), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 267-288. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1057-6290(2013)0000015016

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2013 Emerald Group Publishing Limited