Oppositional organisational structures governing managerial drives towards increased joint working practices among healthcare professionals

Recently, we see a change in the organisation of public hospital healthcare with strives toward a re-orientation of professional standards and workflows. Increasing demand for adaptive and collaborative capacity emphazises the need to rethink the way these organisations are organized and led which may challenge doxa of the healthcare field. Drawing on interviews with chief doctors and chief nurses at two major public hospitals in Denmark who had job-experiences from differently positioned hospitals, our comparative approach highlights the conditions of possibility of new forms of governing professionals through drives towards changed working practice. We find that the new standards of care reproduce care hierarchies and professional closure to a varying degree dependent on the relative prestige of the involved hospitals, their specialties and the involved healthcare professionals.