Management by Contract: Rhetoric and Reality in the NHS

For the past eight years the Centre for Corporate Strategy and Change has conducted a major stream of research looking at service change in the NHS and aspects of the implementation of the NHS reforms (Pettigrew, Ferlie and McKee, Ashburner, Ferlie and Fitzgerald, Bennett and Pettigrew, Ferlie and Bennett). This paper is based on the emerging findings from a new empirical study of the development of the process of contracting in the NHS.