Teaser: Have you ever been kept awake worrying about how value relates to efficiency or to cost effectiveness? Relax, these are just concepts each created by an academic who down played, or ignored and did not even reference, the other two concepts in the competitive world of academia. Weick makes it clear that you just have to relax and make sense of the perspectives of these different experts and authorities

Peter Senge describes how in most organisations people save their creative, open style of learning for the weekends, and at work just get on with the job. But it doesn't have to be like that..

Everett Rogers had it all worked out decades before the internet came along. The digital medium has changed some of the rules but the game is the same, and this book described the rules of the game in 1995.

Wenger describes how most organisations usually work in ignorance of how other organisations, with the same mission, are getting on. If they compare performance with others it is usually to compete and win, or at least avoid losing. In a community of practice they share to learn.

Teaser: “I don’t know” are the most important three words in medicine. The truth is, the more one knows, the less certain one is. And this is certainly true in medicine where combining an individual’s personal goals and specific attributes to the research evidence means that the Uncertain Physician is one of the most experienced. In this great book, Kurt Link explores the ideas around managing and dealing with uncertainty in healthcare.

Teaser: Images of Organization is a classic based on a very simple premise—that all theories of organization and management are based on implicit images or metaphors that stretch our imagination in a way that can create powerful insights. Morgan provides resources for exploring the complexity of modern organizations.

Teaser: This is a 700-page report released for the Government of the United Kingdom on 30 October 2006 and is considered as one of the most important documents to combine climate change science and economics. It has important implications for health - the impact on health itself, the economic effects of changes in health and the impact on health from economic changes. Leaders of health systems cannot ignore climate change and their role in recognising that healthcare services have a major environmental impact on the planet, making this landmark report critically important.

Teaser: How do we avoid a culture of contentment so that we don’t make the changes we need. In this great book, world-leading health economist Cam Donaldson defends NHS-type systems on the same basis as their detractors: economic efficiency. However, protecting government funding of health care is not enough: scarcity has to be managed. Donaldson goes on to show how we can get more out of our systems by addressing issues of value for money. In particular, he demonstrates what has been achieved through health care reform but questions how much more this can deliver relative to getting serious about priority setting.

Culture forms a complex framework of national, organizational, and professional attitudes and values within which groups and individuals function. In this book the authors explore the influences of culture in two professions, aviation and medicine. Their focus is on commercial airline pilots and operating room teams. Within these two environments they show the effect of professional, national and organizational cultures of individual attitudes and values and team interaction.

Teaser: Have you ever wanted to better understand the role of professions like doctors and nurses? In this book, Elliot Krause considers the autonomy and leverage of modern professional groups---medicine, law, university teaching, and engineering. Krause considers the implications for professionals and those they serve.