Upsetting the Apple Cart Whilst Pulling it along the Road: Implementing the National Service Framework for Mental Health Available to Purchase

This paper argues that the traditional approach to translating national policy into local practice, based as it is on a metaphor of organisations as machines, will not lead to effective implementation of the national service framework for mental health. The recent innovations of performance management and evidence‐based practice will not rectify the failures inherent in that traditional approach. Rather, the paper contends that there is need for a broader range of metaphors of organisations to be deployed in the creation of a robust implementation process and suggests three ‐ negotiated order, chaos theory and learning theory ‐ that the authors have found of particular value.