EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Seagull management and the control of nursing work

Hannah Cooke
Additional contact information
Hannah Cooke: University Of Manchester

Work, Employment & Society, 2006, vol. 20, issue 2, 223-243

Abstract: This article considers data from a qualitative study of discipline and misconduct in nursing. It outlines the ways in which the study can inform our understanding of changes in the control of nursing work. Specifically it considers evidence for work intensification in nursing and contrasts this with policy pronouncements, which have proclaimed that nurses have been empowered by recent changes. The study found that empowerment often implied increased responsibility accompanied by tightened control. Some nurses described their managers as ‘seagull’ managers and the article elaborates what was meant by that term. The four key features of seagull management were: distance, distrust, destructive criticism, and a defensive culture.

Keywords: empowerment; NHS management; nursing work; work intensification; workplace control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017006064112 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:20:y:2006:i:2:p:223-243

DOI: 10.1177/0950017006064112

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Work, Employment & Society from British Sociological Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-20
Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:20:y:2006:i:2:p:223-243