From framework to real work
Congratulations to Dr Anne-Marie Craig following the successful defence of her thesis in the School of Management's first virtual viva!
Dr Craig submitted her thesis after the beginning of Covid-19 lockdown and was examined using the Microsoft Teams platform by the School's Professor Kevin Orr and Dr Joyce Wilkinson of the University of Stirling. Appropriately, her research considers how a complex organisation adopted innovative approaches to practice and how these innovations were maintained over time across a geographically dispersed organisation.
In her research, Dr Craig used complexity theories and knowledge mobilisation theories to examine how Allied Health Professions transformed their services to children and young people in line with the ambitions of a Scottish Government policy framework. She found that successful adaptations to practice were achieved through collaboration across different levels of a complex adaptive system. The study recognised the patterns, rhythms, and politics of change as an emergent quality of system interactions rather than a pre-determined regimented process.
Dr Craig's work offers implications for policy makers and practitioners about how large scale change is anticipated and observed. It highlights:
- distributed leadership
- cultivation of an allocentric or ‘community-focused’ disposition
- feedback loops for maintaining the trajectory and momentum of change across a system.
Dr Craig's research in organisational behaviours and values, especially her findings on the importance of feedback loops and epistemic artefacts, is also of direct relevance to her current role. She is working on a project to develop and implement a National Value Framework with the National Institute of Health Research.
