Mobilizing Knowledge in Healthcare : Challenges for Management and Organization

The divide between research and practice is one of the biggest challenges to healthcare improvement globally. This book aims to build a research-led, empirically-grounded, state of the art review of how knowledge is mobilized in healthcare settings and the critical challenges involved.

The research-practice gap is a persistent problem in healthcare - significant new knowledge is created but only some of it is shared and even less is used. As a consequence, many innovative ideas fail to change practice in healthcare settings. Academics, practitioners, and governments alike, agree that finding new ways of mobilizing knowledge is critical to reducing this gap. Yet knowledge mobilization is especially difficult in such a complex setting. This is because knowledge is essentially social and contextual in its very nature. Straightforward, linear ''transfer'' models fail to work. This book provides an alternative ''knowledge mobilization'' view, that examines in detail how knowledge is circulated and negotiated among those involved in healthcare, and how it is used to actually transform practice. Building on the collective scholarship of some of the most prominent academics in this area, the chapters explore the dynamics of knowledge mobilization, focusing on the challenges these pose for organization and management and how these challenges can be overcome.