The second topic, dealt with in Part 2 entitled “Innovations on the Collective Side”, explores innovation as the product of new agencies. These spaces or collectives of all kinds, communities of practice and innovation laboratories among others, are themselves innovations from the point of view of organizations and the health system. Their establishment questions current practices and expresses a form of productive resistance in organizations and the healthcare system (Courpasson et al. 2012). The hypothesis here sees innovation as the product of a protective zone that allows stakeholders to freely engage in exploration and experimentation. The vitality of such spaces depends on the fact that the organization accepts the temporary suspension of environmental discipline to allow innovation to emerge (Zietsma & Lawrence 2010). These spaces testify to the importance of creativity and detachment in rethinking ways of doing things. They also enable the bringing together of stakeholders who usually operate in parallel or separate universes. They will bring innovation insofar as what they produce is taken up and accepted by stakeholders who can influence the decisions made within the organization.
This is the challenge of sustainability and scaling up of healthcare innovations where, too often, successful local experiences fail to be brought to light and institutionalized. Here, the authors do not deal only with innovative spaces but also with innovations in the design of organizations (structuring into clusters, for example) or in public policies (territorialization of policies, for example). It can be hypothesized that innovative design and new spaces of innovation complement each other, perhaps offering the prospect of an institutionalization of innovation. Innovations in organizational design in a sense absorb the logic of the living laboratory by formalizing new frameworks for interaction. They must be accompanied by change and boldness of ideas and mindsets in order for organizational innovations and new practices to emerge. Finally, technologies are called upon to play an increasingly important role in bringing together and creating tension between various stakeholders in search of innovation. Each of the chapters presented in this section could consider the potential of new technologies to create collective spaces that accelerate organizational innovation (Ansell & Gash 2018).
The third topic, dealt with in Part 3 entitled “Reflective Insights on Organizational Innovations in Healthcare”, gives way for the systematic analysis of experiences to contemplate change and innovation, whether through research or through evaluation in context. This part highlights, through the various contributions that compose it, the importance of the knowledge-power nexus in understanding and shaping innovations (Ferlie & McGivern 2014). Organizational innovation emerges from a rather deliberate process and does not easily reveal all its subtlety. Systematic processes must be put in place in order to learn from experience and produce knowledge that can accompany and propel innovations. The idea is to produce, by means of a reflexive analysis, knowledge about the conditions for transforming an organization or a health system. The analysis of public healthcare policy offers an opportunity to learn in real time from initiatives aimed at bringing about large-scale transformations and generalizing organizational innovations.
The next challenge is to make this knowledge effective, i.e. to create the conditions for stakeholders to take an interest in it in order to act in favor of innovation. Management tools and policy instruments play a key role here, since they put into circulation representations of activities, behaviors and changes they can induce that were previously less or little known. Ideally, they make it possible to open up new objects to governance, whether it be the state of health of a population, quality of life or healthy living with illness (Jarzabkowski & Kaplan 2015). In all innovation processes, it is important to pay attention to the resource allocation channels that weigh in favor of or against organizational innovation. It is not enough to want to renew primary care or encourage the so-called grassroots innovation; an organization must be able to dedicate the resources that will enable these stakeholders to materialize their projects. These resources are not necessarily new, underlining the importance of being able to reallocate resources to emerging priorities or representations in the healthcare system.
The three parts that structure this book on organizational innovation in healthcare complement one another. Fostering innovation requires stakeholders with the capacity to influence, spaces to create and experiment, and knowledge about processes that can support and accelerate the challenging of the status quo and the implementation of new organizational modes or practices. One of the essential conditions for the governance of innovation in healthcare systems is the question of alignment and coherence between public policies and the dynamics and needs found in organizations and clinical settings. This book provides us with the pieces to tackle the puzzle of organizational innovation with seriousness and relevance. It will benefit from being complemented by a reflection on the political and social conditions that enable health systems to adapt better than others to the major contemporary challenges of health and thus to capitalize on innovation on a large scale, whether organizational or not.
Jean-Louis DENIS
CR-CHUM
Université de Montréal
March 2021
References
Ansell, C. and Gash, A. (2018). Collaborative platforms as a governance strategy. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 28(1), 16–32.
Courpasson, D., Dany, F., Clegg, S. (2012). Resisters at work: Generating productive resistance in the workplace. Organization Science, 23(3), 801–819.
Denis, J.L., Usher, S., Preval, J., Côté-Boileau, É. (2018). Health system reforms in mature welfare states: Tales from the North. Revista Brasileira em Promoção da Saúde, 31(4), 1–15.
Ferlie, E. and McGivern, G. (2014). Bringing Anglo-governmentality into public management scholarship: The case of evidence-based medicine in UK health care. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 24(1), 59–83.
Hallett, T. and Ventresca, M.J. (2006). Inhabited institutions: Social interactions and organizational forms in Gouldner’s Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy. Theory and Society, 35(2), 213–236.
Hinings, B., Gegenhuber, T., Greenwood, R. (2018). Digital innovation and transformation: An institutional perspective. Information and Organization, 28(1), 52–61.
Jarzabkowski, P. and Kaplan, S. (2015). Strategy toolsation: An institutional perspective “technologies of rationality” in practice. Strategic Management Journal, 36(4), 537–558.
Lemaire, N. (2019). Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) : quelle pertinence pour le système de santé français ? Les Tribunes de la santé, 1, 99–107.
Light, D.W. (2010). Health-care professions, markets and countervailing powers. Handbook of Medical Sociology, 6, 270–289.
Osty, F., Sainsaulieu, I., Uhalde, M. (2007). Les mondes sociaux de l’entreprise : penser le développement des organisations. La Découverte, Paris.
Thornton, P.H. and Ocasio, W. (2008). Institutional logics. In The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Suddaby, R., Sahlin, K. (eds). SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks.
Zietsma, C. and Lawrence, T.B. (2010). Institutional work in the transformation of an organizational field: The interplay of boundary work and practice work. Administrative Science Quarterly, 55(2), 189–221.