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Young people who are looked after by the state face challenges as they make the transition from care to adulthood, with variation in support available. In the past decade, funding has been directed towards organisations to pilot innovations to support transition, with accompanying evaluations often conducted with a single disciplinary focus, in a context of short timescales and small budgets. Recognising the value and weight of the challenge involved in evaluation of innovations that aim to support the transitions of young people leaving care, this paper aims to provide a review of evaluation approaches and suggestions regarding how these might be developed.

As part of a wider research programme to improve understanding of the innovation process for young people leaving care, the authors conducted a scoping review of grey literature (publications which are not peer reviewed) focusing on evaluation of innovations in the UK over the past 10 years. The authors critiqued the evaluation approaches in each of the 22 reports they identified with an inter-disciplinary perspective, representing social care, public health and organisation science.

The authors identified challenges and opportunities for the development of evaluation approaches in three areas. Firstly, informed by social care, the authors suggest increased priority should be granted to participatory approaches to evaluation, within which involvement of young people leaving care should be central. Secondly, drawing on public health, there is potential for developing a common outcomes’ framework, including methods of data collection, analysis and reporting, which aid comparative analysis. Thirdly, application of theoretical frameworks from organisation science regarding the process of innovation can drive transferable lessons from local innovations to aid its spread.

By adopting the unique perspective of their multiple positions, the authors’ goal is to contribute to the development of evaluation approaches. Further, the authors hope to help identify innovations that work, enhance their spread, leverage resources and influence policy to support care leavers in their transitions to adulthood.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/00483489610130904. When citing the article, please cite: Graeme Currie, (1996), “Contested terrain: The incomplete closure of managerialism in the health service”, Personnel Review, Vol. 25 Iss: 5, pp. 8 - 22.

Identifies the influence of organization structure upon the success of management development interventions in a typical district health authority. Uses Henry Mintzberg′s work on configurations as a framework to analyse contingent structural variables. Research was carried out over 18 months regarding the impact of management development on clinicians. Used were questionnaires, action plans with follow up, and observation to survey a range of clinicians and non‐clinicians from both community and ward‐based units. Suggests that structures should be reflective of a machine bureaucracy or adhocracy, if radical behaviour change is to result from management development for clinicians. Forces for efficiency and/or innovation should be evident. Where structure is reflective of the professional bureaucracy, and the force for proficiency is at the fore, attempted behaviour changes should be of an incremental nature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine power asymmetries in the delivery of genetics healthcare that inhibit knowledge sharing across sector, organisational and professional boundaries.

The paper is a longitudinal comparative case study approach, which encompasses semi‐structured interviews and observation.

The paper finds politics to be significant in its influence on knowledge sharing across sector, organisational and professional boundaries, but this can be mediated by attending to human and social aspects of the context in which knowledge sharing was expected to take place.

The paper encourages research that evaluates the effect of increased emphasis on human and social aspects of organisational change in pursuit of the “dream” of spanning boundaries and improving knowledge sharing within the NHS.

The paper shows that structural change appears to be of limited effect in promoting knowledge sharing. Organisational and individual development, career management and performance systems are worthy of attention for the purpose of managing knowledge.

The paper exposes this assumption as managerialist. Policy‐makers assume that professionals are willing and able to share knowledge when delivering healthcare through networks.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse role transition for professionals moving towards hybrid managerial roles. Specifically, the authors examine reforms to the national tax agency in the UK, focusing on attempts to shift hybrid managers away from a focus on tax compliance, to a greater customer focus. This extends understanding of the relationship between New Public Management (NPM) and the public professions, by offering greater insight into the dynamic between regulators and regulatees, as professionals are co-opted into management roles that encompass greater customer orientation.

The authors draw on documentary data relating to reform from 2003 to 2012 and 43 semi-structured interviews with senior tax inspectors co-opted into hybrid manager roles.

The findings support established accounts of the effect of NPM reform to public professions, as these professionals are co-opted into hybrid management roles. Some hybrid managers resist, others embrace the demands of the new role. Linked to a hitherto neglected aspect of analysis (the extent to which hybrid managers embrace a greater customer orientation) the findings also show a more novel third response: some hybrid managers leave the national tax agency for opportunities in the private sector. These public-to-private professionals the authors call “canny customers”. Canny customers are ideally placed to exploit aspects of NPM reform, and thereby accelerate changes in the governance of public agencies, but in a way that might undermine the function of the tax agency and tax professions.

In regulatory settings, policy reform to co-opt professionals into hybrid managerial roles may have mixed effects. In settings where a focal dynamic is the regulator-regulatee relationship, effective governance will require understanding of the labour market to temper excess influence by those hybrid managers who become canny customers, otherwise, in settings where it is easy for individuals to move from regulator to regulatee, the pace and consequences of reform will be harder to govern. This runs the danger of eroding professional values. The specific case of tax professionals reflects themes in the literature examining hybridisation for accountants, and provides novel insight into the dynamics of professionalism that extend to the case of accountants.

The contribution is to extend the literature on role transition of professionals. The authors focus on hybrid managers in the context of a regulatory agency: the UK national tax agency. Policy reforms associated with hybridisation emphasised customer orientation. The authors highlight labour market characteristics impacting the regulator-regulatee dynamic, and an as yet unexplored, unintended consequence of reform. The public professional who leaves for the private sector becomes a “canny customer” who can exploit and accelerate reform.

Focuses on how behaviour changes in an organization should be evaluated following management development. Describes the evaluation strategy, the rationale for this, and problems associated with such a strategy, following a team‐building programme of integrated modules in a community‐based unit of a district health authority.

Provides a case study of teambuilding training in a clinical environment. Analyses changes in behaviour for individuals and teams following training, and seeks to provide lessons for the trainer and line manager by drawing out the successes and problems of the intervention. Also provides lessons for trainers and line managers in professional environments, but more broadly for trainers involved with teambuilding training. Also raises the issue of what constitutes organization development.

Gives an explanation of the salient factors which affected the design of a training intervention aimed at clinicians in West Birmingham Health Authority. Discusses the theoretical considerations relevant to learning in an organization, using a case study to illustrate.