Sunday 08 September

Projects

We have undertaken work for pan-governmental institutions, UK government departments, regional and local government groupings, individual public sector organisations, private investor groups, charities, established companies and start-up businesses.

Services

We have successfully completed over 200 projects ranging from small rapid reviews, to larger, process review, change and delivery assignments in both the domestic and international markets.

Collaboration

Crystal Blue collaborates with academic institutions, other consultancy groups and professional organisations both internationally and across the UK to ensure we provide our clients with the best support and most up to date research findings.

Welcome

Crystal Blue is a network-based consultancy firm led by directors Tessa and John Crilly that has been providing high quality economic and financial consultancy to public and private sector clients for over 15 years.

Knowledge Mobilisation and Resource Based View of the Firm

Client/Funder: SDO and NIHR – Department of Health R&D Programme
Lead contractor: King’s College, London
Principle Investigator: Prof Ewan Ferlie

Description
Following an earlier Scoping Review, the same academic team was commissioned to undertake a literature review with the title: “Knowledge mobilisation in healthcare organisations: synthesising evidence and theory using perspectives of organisational form, resource based view of the firm and critical theory” (SDO Project 09/1002/13). It was a rigorous piece of work that investigated organisational and strategic management theories and considered whether they were well suited to the UK publicly-funded National Health Service. We used the work of major international thinkers to map an analytical framework that would be relevant to the NHS, involving economic concepts of performance, competition and strategic goals. The Resource Based View of the Firm concentrates on internal organisational strengths and the impact that managers can make on performance. Critical theory emphasises the role of conflict and authority. It highlights the difference between healthcare institutions, which employ powerful autonomous clinical professionals, and conventional firms with managerial chains of command.

Services provided
Project management, methodology design, research, theory-building, presentation to Chief Executives, report and peer-review article writing

Highlights
Organisation-specific features appear to be more important than external industry or market-condition factors (with a potential 22% premium). Leadership, management and internal resource base (e.g. organisational slack) allow one organisation to outperform another, even in the same difficult environment. We collected an evidence base that underscores the primacy of quality over cost-efficiency.