Begley, Philip ORCID: 0000-0002-2580-7914 and Sheard, Sally ORCID: 0000-0001-8116-9120
(2021)
From "Honeymoon Period" to "Stable Marriage": The Rise of Management Consultants in British Health Policymaking.
Bulletin of the history of medicine, 95 (2).
pp. 227-255.
Abstract
Since the creation of the National Health Service in 1948, different groups of experts have competed to inform the development of British health policy. This article analyzes the long-term rise of one of these groups-management consultants. The scale and regularity of their engagement has increased considerably over time, strikingly in recent years, and the functions fulfilled by consultants have become ever more diverse. At important moments they were often seen by policymakers-particularly when there was understood to be a lack of internal expertise-as possessors and imparters of important knowledge. Firms and individuals worked consciously to integrate themselves into emerging health policy networks. But there has often been relatively little consideration of their real suitability for work in the health field. Many debates around the use of external consultants today-accountability, value for money, dependency-were foreshadowed during earlier periods, with implications for current policymakers.
Item Type: | Article |
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Uncontrolled Keywords: | Humans, Marriage, Health Policy, Consultants, State Medicine |
Divisions: | Faculty of Health and Life Sciences Faculty of Health and Life Sciences > Institute of Population Health Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Histories, Languages and Cultures |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Admin |
Date Deposited: | 03 Sep 2021 06:59 |
Last Modified: | 02 Jun 2023 14:17 |
DOI: | 10.1353/bhm.2021.0031 |
Open Access URL: | http://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2021.0031 |
Related URLs: | |
URI: | https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3135105 |