Abstract
The aim of the study is to shed light on how the role of first-line management is defined and carried out in the context of healthcare and how this impacts on the overall management performance of healthcare organisations in delivering patient care. It will, therefore, contribute to understanding of how first-line management in healthcare organisations - seen as pivotal in delivering patient care -gets done and the tensions which accompany it. It will also contribute to more general debates in management about how, if at all, first-line management has changed and the practical implications of that. Two types of first-line management role - line' managers proper and senior professionals who have first-line management in addition to their professional responsibilities (ward sisters) - will be studied in two organisations, St.Richard's Hospital, Chichester and The Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford. Using a mixture of structured and unstructured interviews with first-line managers and those to whom they report and with whom they work, observation and recording of work activities and scrutiny of documents, information on the following will be collected: * How the role of first-line management is defined by the expectations of others in the organisation * How first-line managers themselves interpret their role and make sense of the tensions within it * How first-line managers carry out their role and try to resolve these tensions * How the role and work of first-line managers, in conjunction with others, affects service delivery * By shedding light on what first-line managers in healthcare are expected to do, whether and how these expectations overlap or conflict, how first-line managers interpret these expectations and what they actually do in the course of their work, the study will contribute to how first-line management may be more effectively managed and conducted and, by extension, healthcare services may be more effectively delivered.