Call for Papers

Medical humanities (Bleakley, 2019; Cole, Carlin & Carson, 2015) is a flourishing academic field where humanities and social sciences try to complement the efforts of scientists and medical doctors to deliver health and social care. Originated in the USA in the 60s (Pellegrino, 1961; Pellegrino & McElhinney, 1982), this emerging discipline recognises the academic relevance of the medical ethics, history of medicine, and sociology of health, in understanding healthcare processes, theory and practice.
 
The field is intrinsically plural, fluid and hard to pin-down through clear-cut definitions or borders. Multiple approaches can be identified, which intersect with multiple disciplines and at different levels of analysis. One approach, for example, views the arts and humanities as a way to enrich medicine and healthcare delivery without interfering directly. A more radical view, instead, aims to directly impact the medical sciences by redefining the meaning of being human, the experience of life, death, sufferance, illness (Das, Angeli & Schayck, 2020). In both cases, the field is hugely important because it contributes to the education of medical students and healthcare professionals, the development of narrative and relational competencies, the study of health-related aspects of our societies, the popularization of medical sciences. Over time, more disciplines have joined the challenge: literature, narrative and narratology (Trautmann Banks & Pollard, 1975; Frank, 1995; Greenhalgh & Hurwitz, 1998; Charon, 2006); language, arts, politics (Newsholme & Kingsbury, 1933); anthropology (Kleinman, 1988; Good, 1994); and political economy (Doyal, 1979). A further development was the establishment of the notion of health humanities. At this point, it seems no longer enough to complement medicine with one discipline from the humanities. The understanding of complex health problems and the study of how medicine and its technologies affect individuals and societies would require a joint, interdisciplinary effort.
 
Organization studies have hardly contributed to medical humanities. The sub-theme on medical humanities at the EGOS Colloquium 2022 in Vienna has started off an important conversation around how organisation theory and practice can leverage medical humanities methods and theories to better understand and design healthcare processes. Building on that initial sub-theme, we aim to continue strengthening the community and advancing the discourse towards the long-term objective of establishing organization studies as a prominent discipline in the field of medical humanities. In particular, the intersection of the two fields is crucial to recognise how the concepts of health and well-being, and the resulting models for healthcare and social care delivery, emerge from the complex interaction of people’s norms and values, institutional and geographical contextual factors and temporal transience, reflecting the path dependency of any social system. Socio-ecological approaches, that appreciate the influence of multiple factors to explain individual health behaviours, organisational practices and systemic outcomes are increasingly recognised as necessary to develop and shape healthcare systems (Angeli, Jaiswal & Shrivastava, 2022). Involving the arts and humanities in investigating these aspects marks an important methodological and theoretical advancement, able to significantly improve organisational and management practices in the health and social care sector. By shifting the attention to how health and well-being are socially constructed, medical humanities provide a highly significant contribution to organisation and management theory at large.
 
This sub-theme aims to attract colleagues interested in the study of complex organizations, such as hospitals (Cook et al., 1983; Westra et al., 2017; Delorenzo et al., 2021), national health services (Westra et al., 2015; Clements, Coady & Gupta, 2012; Battilana, 2011; Blumenthal & Hsiao 2005), pharmaceutical firms (Angeli, 2014) or professionals (managers, doctors, scientists, social workers…) involved in healthcare, medicine and public health (Martin et al., 2020; Goel et al., 2019; Petrakaki et al, 2016; Hoeyer, 2009; Waring & Currie 2009). Socio-ecological views and system-oriented approaches are also very welcome, which embrace the complexity and socially constructed nature of health and well-being models and organisations (Angeli et al., 2022; Angeli & Montefusco, 2020, Angeli, Camporesi, del Fabbro, 2021). There are many possible insights that we would be able to bring into the field. For instance, the perspective of organization studies will enrich the way we look at healthcare and medicine with constructs, variables and categories such as autonomy, centralization, efficiency, power, politics, conflict, subcultures, employment relations, voice, participation, managerialism (Bernardi & Greenwood, 2014; Currie et al., 2012; Hasselbladh & Bejerot, 2007).
 
We are also interested in health, safety and wellbeing at work and the study of the behaviour of those hosted by total institutions such as hospitals, asylums, and quarantine facilities (Goffman, 1961; Holmqvist et al., 2013).
 
Another potential case is military medicine in both peacetime and war. Additionally, if we look back at our own disciplinary founding fathers and funding myths in the early 20^th century, we would find that the interest in health, hygiene and healthcare has never been alien to organization studies. To this end, management and organizational history can play an important role in understanding the influence of time, space and people in the social construction of health.
 

References

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