Who Killed the Primary Care Strategy? A Socio-Material Analysis

Abstract

This study places the intended creation and implementation of an inter-professional education strategy at the intersection of three networks. The networks in question are cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), actor network theory (ANT), and a complex healthcare organisation (NHSX). CHAT and ANT, whilst both socio-material in origin, afford quite different readings of NHSX: therefore, the former has been used to identify, distil, and decompose the organisational activity systems, and the latter has been used to problematise them. The strategy was created in 2005 and had ceased to exist by 2010. This study therefore employs CHAT and ANT accounts to trace the lifespan of the strategy through the organisation, in particular through organisational working, learning, and boundary crossing, in an attempt to explain its untimely demise. It is envisaged that this study will provide an aid to framing how socio-material approaches can be combined to support inter-professional policy construction and implementation in a way that will allow flexibility for others to adapt to their own distinctive circumstances