Control and the National Health Service: some psychology of managing health care with budgets and cash limits

Abstract

As the opening chapters indicated, the issue of control is one which can be approached from a variety of perspectives. The approach taken in this chapter is through a psychological perspective. It is a psychological perspective because the focus is upon the way in which individual managers have responded to change in relation to the accounting system in their hospital, and the individual choices which these managers have made in relation to the financial management information with which they have been provided. In coming to this work, the author accepts the personal construct psychology of George Kelly which notes that it is possible for individuals to construe and respond to the same event in different ways, amongst other things (Kelly, 1955). The notions used to model this work are simplified because of the limited space available for this contribution, the limited time available to work with individuals, and the fact that it is not possible to detail all psychological issues.