Organizational Change Within The National Health Service

The Purpose of this essay will be to discuss organisational change within the National Health Service which will be critically analysed by relevant literature on power, politics and communication to understand the key inhibitors of this change. In particular, this essay will focus on Gerry Robinson’s aim of reducing theatre waiting lists of 3500 people within 6 months to prevent financial problems for Rotherham Hospital (Alepoudellis, 2013). In addition, further literature will be used to highlight the lessons learnt when conducting management of organisational change. “Organisational systems are conceptualised as operating in three types of environment – temporal, external and internal- that interact with each other to create the triggers

The Kaleidoscope is a ring and the outer layer demonstrates the organisations strategic vision; for example, Rotherham hospitals vision was to reduce theatre waiting lists within 6 months by making more use of time. One of the surgeons was only using a third of their allotted time on operations. Patients can be waiting for up to 3 months so efficient usage of time would reduce this significantly (Alepoudellis, 2013). This suggests that the kaleidoscope tool can be used to analyse organisational change. Furthermore, the next layer in is similar to the processual perspective by Dawson as it focuses on contextual constraints which may hinder the change process. The literature highlights the model as a process rather than a sequence of events. One of those factors is time and Gerry Robinson was given 6 months to fix the NHS (Alepoudellis, 2013). According to Hailey and Balogun (2002), organisations with little time like the NHS need to respond quickly. Gerry suggests that the job he took on was more difficult than he imagined (Alepoudellis, 2013). He didn’t have long to implement the change which suggests that time was a contextual feature which hindered Rotherham’s organisational change, demonstrating that the kaleidoscope can be applied to case studies. Another factor is power and Gerry was the change initiator, however other stakeholders such as consultants seemed to have more influence/ power because they have been working there longer. This suggests that power was a major influence which hindered change within theatres which is the same as Dawson’s processual perspective. Members of staff were knowledgeable and knew that a change was needed, however a lack of management meant that nothing changed (Alepoudellis, 2013). Finally, the middle section of the framework is implementer options but the