Making decisions about people

Using stroke rehabilitation wards as its setting, this study looks at the everyday organisational problems and theoretical questions that arise when decisions are made inside large institutions. It revisits the original, 'classical' form of ethnomethodology and sets it apart from later developments in the sociology of scientific knowledge and conversation analysis. The analytical approach draws on management science and interactionist sociology, and is built to examine how professionals in bureaucratic settings reach decisions in practice.

The book works through recorded meetings to answer two questions: how do competing professional and personal viewpoints get reconciled when a team meets, and how do formal instruments such as policies, protocols and practice standards actually figure in real situations? Along the way it proposes a research method that steers clear of both relativism and the treatment of social phenomena as fixed objects.

It also turns to the pressures facing health professionals today, including an ageing patient population, tight resources, and newer management methods and organisational structures that shape how care is delivered.