Managing professionals

Managing Professionals deals with the tensions between managers and professionals within organizations, such as hospitals, universities, banks and judicial organizations. Often managers rely heavily on the skills and expertise of the professionals in their organizations, yet these professionals consider management a source of bureaucracy and paperwork.

This tension is explored head on in order to answer the question of how to manage an organization effectively. With numerous real-world examples, the book analyzes the problems and complexities of management in professional organizations and makes recommendations on how to manage professionals. The book focuses on a number of key issues, including:

• Management as a problem
• Management as a solution
• Knowledge and innovation
• Strategy
• Cooperation
• Performance

Managing Professionals presents an empirical analysis of the problems and offers solutions to the tension between management and professionals and will be of interest to managers and to students of management, organizational behaviour and business administration.

Hans de Bruijn is a Professor of Public Administration at Delft University, the Netherlands. Much of his research and consultancy focuses on the role of managers in professional organizations. He is the author of Managing Performance in the Public Sector and co-author of Management in Networks, both published by Routledge.