From policy framework to practice real work : exploring knowledge mobilisation within a complex adaptive system

Rationale: Successful implementation of evidence-based innovations has been identified as offering the best outcomes for service users, communities, and organisations. A widening understanding of structures, processes and resources essential to the successful adoption of innovative practices has informed the development of implementation frameworks that seek to bring research users and providers closer together. Despite these efforts, best available research knowledge is still difficult to translate into innovations in practice at scale, requiring the investment and co-ordination of resources across interconnected social structures that can be resistant to change. However, some changes do take hold and lead to new practices becoming integrated into organisational routines. Mobilising individual and collective knowledge have been identified as a key factor in delivering organisational changes. Research in this area has highlighted the role of complex, context dependent and power-laden organizational structures in relation to the spread and use of knowledge while the role of the individual as the agent of change within these organisational structures has received less attention. This study adds empirically to the conceptual and theoretical literature by focusing on the individual as the agent of change and the role of knowledge as a catalyst for the implementation of changes in practice. Drawing on literature on the creation, sharing and use of knowledge and employing the principles of complexity theory to construe the context as a series of complex adaptive systems, the study seeks to gain an understanding of how a Government policy framework transforms into individuals creating, sharing and actioning knowledge to secure changes in practice. Study Context: This study considered how the ambitions of a Scottish Government Policy, Ready to Act (R2A) were implemented within the organisational setting of an NHS Scotland health board. The participants in the study were a group of Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) ...