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Hollowing out national agreements in the NHS? The case of ‘Improving Working Lives’ under a ‘Turnaround’ plan

Roper, Ian, ETHERINGTON, David and Lewis, Sue (2017) Hollowing out national agreements in the NHS? The case of ‘Improving Working Lives’ under a ‘Turnaround’ plan. Employee Relations, 39 (2). pp. 145-159. ISSN 0142-5455

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Abstract or description

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider the resilience of a national-level initiative (Improving Working Lives (IWL)) in the face of local-level initiative (Turnaround) in an NHS hospital and compare to Bach and Kessler’s (2012) model of public service employment relations. Design/methodology/approach – Case study research consisting of 23 in-depth semi-structured interviews from a range of participants. Findings – The principles behind IWL were almost entirely sacrificed in order to meet the financial objectives of Turnaround. This indicates the primacy of localised upstream performance management initiatives over the national-level downstream employee relations initiatives that form the basis of the NHS’ claim to model employer aspiration. Research limitations/implications – The case study was conducted between 2007 and 2009. While the case study falls under previous government regime, the dualised system of national-level agreements combined with localised performance management – and the continued existence of both Turnaround and IWL – makes the results relevant at the time of writing. Originality/value – Some studies (e.g. Skinner et al., 2004) indicated a perception that IWL was not trusted by NHS staff. The present study offers reasons as to why this may be the case. Keywords Work-life balance, NHS, Collective bargaining Paper type Case study

Item Type: Article
Faculty: School of Business, Leadership and Economics > Business, Management and Marketing
Depositing User: David ETHERINGTON
Date Deposited: 26 Feb 2019 10:16
Last Modified: 24 Feb 2023 13:54
URI: https://eprints.staffs.ac.uk/id/eprint/5407

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