Mind the gaps: managing difference in partnership working

Abstract

Community health partnerships in Scotland were given a renewed centrality in health policy during 2014. They have, however, experienced mixed success in their 10-year history. Drawing on interviews with senior managers in a large community health partnership, this paper highlights the challenges of leading and managing change and integration across organizational boundaries, seeks to learn from the failures that occurred, and considers the implications for policy implementation in the future.

Keywords:

• Change
• integration
• partnerships
• policy implementation

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health. I would like to acknowledge their support for this study. I would also like to thank Soumen Sengupta for his comments on a draft of this paper and Public Money&Management's two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful critiques. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the major contribution of Jane Ford, the research associate on this project.