Chapter 8 Healthcare organizations and the Stanford School of Organizational Sociology

The Stanford School of Organizational Sociology has influenced the development and direction of healthcare organizations as a field of research in several very significant ways. This chapter will provide a focused review of the major paradigms to develop from work at Stanford from 1970 to 2000, much of which involved the study of processes and structures within and surrounding healthcare organizations during this period. As a subarea of organizational theory and health services research, healthcare organizations embrace both theory-based research and applied research, and they borrow concepts, theories, and methods from medical sociology, organizational theory, healthcare administration and management, and (to a more limited extent) health economics and decision theory. The bulk of this chapter will focus on four major themes or paradigms from research on healthcare organizations that grew from work by faculty and students within the Stanford School of Organizational Sociology: Health Care Outcomes, Internal Organizational Dynamics, Organizations and Their Environments, and Organizational Systems of Care and Populations of Care Providers. Following our examination of these four paradigms, we will consider their implications for current and future debates in health services research and healthcare policy.