Skip to main content

Professional Pastoral Work in a Kenyan Clinical Network: Transposing Transnational Evidence-Based Governmentality

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Decentring Health and Care Networks

Part of the book series: Organizational Behaviour in Healthcare ((OBHC))

Abstract

The Foucauldian concepts of governmentality and pastoral power have been used to explain the way health professionals internalise evidence-based practices in health care generally and clinical networks more specifically. However, we know little about the work, practices and process involved in developing and implementing an ‘evidence-based governmentality’ outside the West, particularly in Low and Middle Income Counties (LMICs), where governmentality often has a different transnational character. We explain the development and implementation of a Western transnational evidence-based governmentality in a clinical network in Kenya, using a decentred analytical approach. We highlight the essential work of medical professional ‘pastors’, with experience of both health care in Kenya and evidence-based medicine in Western High-Income Countries, in transposing this governmentality into health care in a LMIC in a way improving clinical care.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Barker, J. R. (1993). Tightening the iron cage: Coercive controlling self-managing teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 38, 408–437.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barley, S., & Kunda, G. (2001). Bringing work back in. Organization Science, 12, 76–95.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bejerot, E., & Hasselbladh, H. (2011). Professional autonomy and pastoral power: The transformation of quality registers in Swedish health care. Public Administration, 89, 1604–1621.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bevir, M. (2010). Rethinking governmentality: Towards genealogies of governance. European Journal of Social Theory, 13, 423.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bevir, M. (2013). A theory of governance. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boussebaa, M. (2015). Professional service firms, globalization and the new imperialism. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 28, 1217–1233.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boussebaa, M. (2017). Global professional service firms, transnational organizing and core/periphery network. In L. Seabrooke & L. Henriksen (Eds.), Professional networks in transnational governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boussebaa, M. (2020). Identity regulation and globalization. In A. D. Brown (Ed.), Oxford handbook of identities in organizations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boussebaa, M., Morgan, G., & Sturdy, A. (2012). Constructing global firms? National, transnational and neocolonial effects in international management consultancies. Organization Studies, 33, 465–486.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boussebaa, M., Sinha, S., & Gabriel, Y. (2014). Englishization in offshore call centers: A postcolonial perspective. Journal of International Business Studies, 45, 1152–1169.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, H. (2016). Managerial relations in Kenyan health care: Empathy and the limits of governmentality. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 22, 591–609.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caldwell, R. (2007). Agency and change: Re-evaluating Foucault’s legacy. Organization, 14, 769–791.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cleary, S., Molyneux, C., & Gilson, L. (2013). Resources, attitudes and culture: an understanding of the factors that influence the functioning of accountability mechanisms in primary health care settings. BMC Health Services Research, 13(1), 320.

    Google Scholar 

  • Currie, G., & White, L. (2012). Inter-professional barriers and knowledge brokering in an organizational context: The case of healthcare. Organization Studies, 33, 1333–1361.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Sardan, J.-P. (2015). Practical norms: Informal regulations within public bureaucracies (in Africa and beyond). In T. de Herdt & J.-P. de Sardan (Eds.), Real governance and practical norms in Sub-Saharan Africa: The game of the rules. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dean, M. (1999). Governmentality: Power and rule in modern society. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • English, M. (2013). Designing a theory-informed, contextually appropriate intervention strategy to improve delivery of paediatric services in Kenyan hospitals. Implementation Science, 8, 1–13.

    Google Scholar 

  • English, M., Gathara, D., Mwinga, S., Ayieko, P., Opondo, C., Aluvaala, J., et al. (2014). Adoption of recommended practices and basic technologies in a low-income setting. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 99, 452–456.

    Google Scholar 

  • English, M., Ayieko, p., Nyamai, R., Were, F., Githanga, D., & Irimu, G. (2017a). What do we think we are doing? How might a clinical information network be promoting implementation of recommended paediatric care practices in Kenyan hospitals? Health Research Policy and Systems, 15(1), 4.

    Google Scholar 

  • English, M., Irimu, G., Nyamai, R., Were, F., Garner, P., & Opiyo, N. (2017b). Developing guidelines in low-income and middle-income countries: lessons from Kenya. Archives of disease in childhood, 102, 846–851.

    Google Scholar 

  • English, M., Wamae, A., Nyamai, R., Bevins, B., & Irimu, G. (2011). Implementing locally appropriate guidelines and training to improve care of serious illness in Kenyan hospitals: A story of scaling-up (and down and left and right). Archives of Disease in Childhood, 96, 285–290.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferguson, J., & Gupta, A. (2002). Spacializing states: Towards an ethnography of neoliberal governmentality. American Ethnologist, 29, 981–2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferlie, E., Dopson, S., Bennett, C., Fischer, M., Ledger, J., & McGivern, G. (2018). The politics of management knowledge in times of austerity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferlie, E., Fitzgerald, L., Mcgivern, G., Dopson, S., & Bennett, C. (2013). Making wicked problems governable? The case of managed health care networks. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferlie, E., & McGivern, G. (2014). Bringing Anglo-governmentality into public management scholarship: The case of evidence-based medicine in UK health care. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 24, 59–83.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferlie, E., McGivern, G., & Fitzgerald, L. (2012). A new mode of organising in health care?: Governmentality and networked cancer services in the UK. Social Science and Medicine, 74, 340–347.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fischer, M., Dopson, S., Fitzgerald, L., Bennett, C., Ferlie, E., Ledger, J., et al. (2016). Knowledge leadership: Mobilising management research by becoming the knowledge object. Human Relations, 69, 1563–1585.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1990). The history of sexuality, Vol. 3: The care of the self. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (2007). Security, territory, population: Lectures at the college de France 1977–1978. New York: Picador.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greissler, P. W. (2015). Introduction: A life science in its African para-state. In P. W. Greissler (Ed.), Para-states and medical science: Making African global health. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kellogg, K. (2009). Operating room: Relational spaces and microinstitutional change in surgery. Americal Journal of Sociology, 115, 657–671.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lemke, T. (2011). Foucault, governmentality and critique. Paradigm: Boulder, CO.

    Google Scholar 

  • Litorpa, H., Mgayaa, A., Mbekengaa, C., Kidantoa, H., Johnsdotterc, S., & Esséna, B. (2015). Fear, blame and transparency: Obstetric caregivers’ rationales for high caesarean section rates in a low-resource setting. Social Science and Medicine, 143, 232–240.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martin, G., Leslie, M., Minion, J., Willars, J., & Dixon-Woods, M. (2013). Between surveillence and subjectification: Professionals and the governance of quality and patient safety in English hospitals. Social Science and Medicine, 99, 80–88.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martin, G., & Waring, J. (2018). Realising governmentality: Pastoral power, governmental discourse and the (re) constitution of subjectivities. The Sociological Review, 66, 1292–1308.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mathiesen, T. (1997). The viewer society: Michel Foucault’s Panopticon’revisited. Theoretical Criminology, 1, 215–234.

    Google Scholar 

  • McGivern, G., Currie, G., Ferlie, E., Fitzgerald, L., & Waring, J. (2015). Hybrid manager-professionals’ identity work, the maintenance and hybridization of medical professionalism in managerial contexts. Public Administration, 93, 412–432.

    Google Scholar 

  • McGivern, G., & Fischer, M. D. (2012). Reactivity and reactions to regulatory transparency in medicine, psychotherapy and counselling. Social Science and Medicine, 74, 286–296.

    Google Scholar 

  • McGivern, G., Nzinga, J., & English, M. (2017). Pastoral practices’ for quality improvement in a Kenyan clinical network. Social Science and Medicine, 195, 115–122.

    Google Scholar 

  • McKinlay, A., & Pezet, E. (2010). Accounting for Foucault. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 6, 486–495.

    Google Scholar 

  • McKinlay, A., & Taylor, P. (2014). Foucault, governmentality and organization: Inside the factory of the future. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, P., & O’Leary, T. (1994). The factory as laboratory. Science in Contex, 7, 469–496.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, P., & Rose, N. (2008). Governing the present. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitton, C., Adair, C. E., McKenzie, E., Patten, S. B., & Perry, B. W. (2007). Knowledge transfer and exchange: Review and synthesis of the literature. The Milbank Quarterly, 85, 729–768.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nxumalo, N., Gilson, L., Goudge, J., Tsofa, B., Cleary, S., Barasa, E., et al. (2018). Accountability mechanisms and the value of relationships: Experiences of front-line managers at subnational level in Kenya and South Africa. BMJ Global Health, 3, e000842.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nzinga, J., Mbindyo, P., Mbaabu, L., Warira, A., & English, E. (2009a). Documenting the experiences of health workers expected to implement guidelines during an intervention study in Kenyan hospitals. Implementation Science, 4, 44.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nzinga, J., McGivern, G., & English, M. (2019a). Hybrid clinical-managers in Kenyan hospitals: Navigating between professional, official and practical norms. Journal of Health Organization & Management, 33, 173–187.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nzinga, J., McKnight, J., Jepkosgei, J., & English, M. (2019b). Exploring the space for task shifting to support nursing on neonatal wards in Kenyan public hospitals. Human Resources for Health, 17, 18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nzinga, J., Ntoburi, S., Wagai, J., Mbindyo, P., Mbaabu, L., Migiro, S., et al. (2009b). Implementation experience during an eighteen month intervention to improve paediatric and newborn care in Kenyan district hospitals. Implementation Science, 4. https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-4-45.

  • Power, M. (2011). Foucault and sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 37, 35–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pratt, M. G., Rockmann, K. W., & Kaufmann, J. B. (2006). Constructing professional identity: The role of work and identity learning cycles in the customization of identity among medical residents. Academy of Management Journal, 49, 235–262.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N., & Miller, P. (1992). Political power beyond the State: Problematics of government. The British Journal of Sociology, 43, 172–205.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sackett, D. L., Rosenberg, W. M., Gray, J. M., Haynes, R. B., & Richardson, W. S. (1996). Evidence based medicine: What it is and what it isn’t. British Medical Journal, 312, 71.

    Google Scholar 

  • Timmermans, S., & Berg, M. (2003). The gold standard: The challenges of evidence-based medicine and standardization in healthcare. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Rensburg, A. J., Rau, A., Fourie, P., & Bracke, P. (2016). Power and integrated health care: Shifting from governance to governmentality. International Journal of Integrated Care, 16, 1–11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Waring, J., & Martin, G. (2016). Network leadership as pastoral power: The governance of quality improvement communities in the English NHS. In M. BEVIR (Ed.), Governmentality after neo-liberalism. London: Palgrave.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gerry McGivern .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

McGivern, G., Nzinga, J., Boussebaa, M., English, M. (2020). Professional Pastoral Work in a Kenyan Clinical Network: Transposing Transnational Evidence-Based Governmentality. In: Bevir, M., Waring, J. (eds) Decentring Health and Care Networks. Organizational Behaviour in Healthcare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40889-3_11

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics