Process and structure: resource management and the development of sub-unit organisational structure

Abstract

Resource Management (RM) requires hospital units to manage their work in new ways, and the new management processes affect, and are affected by, organisation structure. This paper is concerned with these effects, reporting on the basis of a three-year evaluation of the national RM experiment that was commissioned by the DH. After briefly indicating some of the major characteristics of the RM process, the two main types of unit structures existing in the pilot sites at the beginning of the experiment, unit disciplinary structure and clinical directorates, are analysed. At the end of the experiment, while clinical directorates had become more popular, another variant, clinical grouping, had replaced the unit disciplinary structure. Both types of structure represent a movement towards sub-unit organisation, bringing the work and interests of the service providers and unit managers closer together. Their properties are likewise analysed and their implications, particularly in terms of training and organisational development (OD), are then considered. The paper concludes by considering the causes for these structural changes, which, in the immediate time-scale, appear to owe as much to the NHS Review as to RM.