In September 2015, CSM hosted the 1st European Health and Social Care Service Innovation Symposium, and as a direct result of this successful EU-networking event a team of six attendees, including Ian Hodgkinson, CSM Deputy Director, representing five different EU countries have had their paper (“What causes imbalance in complex service networks? Evidence from a public health service”) accepted for publication in the prestigious Journal of Service Management: Verleye, K., Jaakkola, E., Hodgkinson, I.R., Jun, G.T., Odekerken-Schröder, G., & Quist, J. 

Adopting a qualitative case-based approach, this paper examines a public health service network that experienced imbalance that was detrimental to the lives of its users: the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust, UK. Drawing on service-dominant logic and stakeholder theory, case evidence provides insight into the origin and drivers of imbalance in complex public service networks.

Dr Hodgkinson said:

With decreasing budgets and resource depletion continuing into the future, identifying how to do more with less becomes ever necessary for public services. While balancing conflicting institutional logics and their associated competing goals is inherently difficult within complex public health service networks, pinpointing conditions that may serve to catalyse imbalance (e.g., accountability, communication, engagement, and responsiveness at low levels) but also serve to manage balance (e.g., accountability, communication, engagement, and responsiveness at high levels), offers critical insight into how policy and practitioners can shape balanced centricity: ensuring that the interests of all actors in a network are secured.