Abstract:

As healthcare providers navigate increasing complexity and fragmentation within care provision, efforts to enact collaborative, networked solutions of care delivery have emerged. However, these collaborative initiatives which encompass both human and non-human actors require stability to ensure a cohesive and durable network is configured. Actor-Network Theory provides a lens through which healthcare networks can be understood as heterogenous assemblages of human and non-human actors whose alignment is continuously negotiated through the stages of translation. Despite Actor-Network Theory being consistently enrolled within healthcare research to examine how healthcare networks are formed and stabilised, limited attention has been directed towards the factors which destabilise these networks in practice and the subsequent implications for care. In particular, there is little evidence about the points at which network destabilisation occurs and how the associated dynamics are experienced in practice. This study draws on data from semi-structured interviews with care professionals to identify the factors which destabilise care networks and the resulting implications for care.

Please choose your submission type: Developmental Paper

Primary Track: Organisational Studies

Keywords: Organisational research and practice: interdisciplinary approaches to understanding and managing the relationships that exist within and across sectors

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Dr. Briga Hynes