Reconfiguring The Eco System For Sustainable Healthcare

Volume 4 considers the configuration of the broader healthcare eco-system. It examines the tight connection between sustainable healthcare, sustainable communities, and sustainable ecologies - and the organizational and inter-organizational approaches being applied to advance overall sustainability.

This book explores the challenges of sustainable agri-food supply chains. It presents and discusses nine cases of organizational innovation, covering different phases of food production and facing different challenges, by proposing alternative models to the traditional paradigm of scale and leverage to design supply chain in these industries.

Innovations in management are becoming more numerous and diverse, and are appearing in organizations providing many different kinds of products and services. The purpose of this book is to examine whether some widely-promoted examples of these management innovations – ranging from techniques such as Kaizen to styles of leadership and the management of learning – can usefully be applied to organizations which provide healthcare, and applied in different kinds of health systems. Management Innovations for Healthcare Organizations is distinctive in selecting a wide and diverse range and selection of managerial innovations to examine. No less distinctively, it makes an adaptive, critical scrutiny of these innovations. Neither evangelist nor nihilist, the book instead considers how these innovations might be adapted for the specific task of providing healthcare. Where evidence on these points is available, the book outlines that too. Consequently the book takes an international approach, with contributions from Europe, the Middle East, Australia and North America. Each contributor is an expert in the management innovation which they present. This combination of features makes the book unique.

Patient engagement should be envisaged as a key priority today to innovate healthcare services delivery and to make it more effective and sustainable. The experience of engagement is a key qualifier of the exchange between the demand (i.e. citizens/patients) and the supply process of healthcare services. To understand and detect the strategic levers that sustain a good quality of patients’ engagement may thus allow not only to improve clinical outcomes, but also to increase patients’ satisfaction and to reduce the organizational costs of the delivery of services. By assuming a relational marketing perspective, the book offers practical insights about the developmental process of patients’ engagement, by suggesting concrete tools for assessing the levels of patients’ engagement and strategies to sustain it. Crucial resources to implement these strategies are also the new technologies that should be (1) implemented according to precise guidelines and (2) designed according to a user-centered design process. Furthermore, the book describes possible fields of patients’ engagement application by describing the best practices and experiences matured in different fields

The third edition of The SAGE Handbook of Action Research presents an updated version of the bestselling text, including new chapters covering emerging areas in healthcare, social work, education and international development, as well as an expanded ‘skills’ section which includes new consultant-relevant materials. Building on the strength of the previous landmark editions, Hilary Bradbury has carefully developed this edition to ensure it follows in their footsteps by mapping the current state of the discipline, as well as looking to the future of the field and exploring the issues at the cutting edge of the action research paradigm today. This volume is an essential resource for scholars and professionals engaged in social and political inquiry, healthcare, international development, new media, organizational research and education.

Marketing in Healthcare-Related Industries captures the concepts and complexities of marketing healthcare in today’s environment. The book provides detailed conceptual and practical insights that will be of great benefit to healthcare scholars and practitioners. Topics on healthcare marketing have been carefully selected to provide wide coverage and are illustrated by mini-cases with a highly practical marketing tool kit for healthcare managers included. The healthcare sector in the 21st century face a multiplicity of challenges, which include changing disease patterns, more technology-driven health interventions, a more assertive and quality conscious clientele, as well as a rapidly growing for-profit segment of the industry. This places more responsibilities on healthcare service providers in both the public and private sectors, to deliver value-for-money services at competitive costs. To respond to the changing business environment, a carefully crafted marketing approach is needed by all players in the industry to create value and sustain the confidence of clientele and stakeholders. Praise for Marketing in Healthcare-Related Industries: "Marketing in Healthcare-Related Industries is a timely book as the healthcare industry grows more customer-focused and faces increasing pressure to deliver high-quality service at more affordable costs. This book will serve as a roadmap for practitioners as it synthesizes insights from many marketing researchers into useful and actionable advice. It should also help students easily master the application of marketing principles to the healthcare industry with tools like review questions at the end of each chapter and mini-cases to apply marketing concepts." ~ Dr. Bruce A. Huhmann, Department Chair and Professor of Marketing, Virginia Commonwealth University "Marketing In Healthcare-related Industries could not have come at a better time. Just as the epidemiological and demographic transitions have changed the cycle of planning, resource allocation, delivering, monitoring and evaluating healthcare (especially in developing countries), shrinking domestic and donor resources for health, and ambitious agendas like the Universal Health Coverage 2030 Agenda, make it imperative that healthcare providers do more with less. This book provides a clear road map to a MARKETING TRANSITION, which links healthcare and marketing in a way hitherto not so clearly outlined. The Toolkit will be a valuable tool for undergraduate and graduate students in healthcare provision, as well as health practitioners who have traditionally not been trained in this area. I commend it highly as a must-read book in this area." ~ Dr. Victor Asare Bampoe - Former Deputy Minister of Health, Ghana and currently Director & Coordinator, Global Financing & Technical Support, Joint United Nation Programme on HIV&AIDS, Geneva "A truly remarkable scholarly work of our time. An easy-to-read and insightful book that captivates the reader, whether practitioner or student." ~ Dr. Abigail Mensah, Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Ghana "This book is well-written, easy-to-understand, and very up-to-date in its approach to marketing in healthcare-related industries. It is useful for undergraduate and graduate students as well as healthcare practitioners." ~ Dr. Gouher Ahmed, Professor of Strategic Leadership & International Business, Skyline University College, UAE

This book is about doing innovative research to achieve sustainable and equitable change in people’s health and well-being through improved interactions with the environment. It presents experiences from the field of ecosystem approaches to health (or ecohealth research) and some insights and lessons learned. It builds on previous literature, notably Forget (1997), Forget and Lebel (2001), Lebel (2003), and Waltner-Toews et al. (2008). Through case-studies and other contributions by researchers supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the book presents evidence of real changes in conditions of people, their health, and the ecosystems that support them. These changes were derived from applications of an ecosystem approach to health in developing regions of the world. The book also illustrates the resulting body of applied, participatory, and action research that improved health and environmental management in developing countries and, in many cases, influenced policies and practices.

While executives are keen to harness organizational knowledge and improve business performance, the topic of how academics can produce rigorous and relevant theory in working relationships with practitioners is a much contested topic. Many aspects of this knowledge co-creation can create tensions, and the ways in which research is conducted and published can affect practitioner acceptance, as well as its consequent uptake and use in different contexts. Expertly compiled by Jean Bartunek and Jane McKenzie, with contributions from global thinkers in the field, this book offers a concise and up-to-date review of the essential analysis and action underlying scholarly engagement with the world of business. It discusses the sorts of capabilities academics need to collaborate effectively with practitioners and illustrates good practice through international case studies drawn from acknowledged centres of excellence. These show how to negotiate different constituencies with different priorities, values, and practices to work together to produce research of rigor and relevance. It will be a key reference and resource for all researchers who are engaged with practitioners, and an invaluable tool for training academics to develop research with impact.