Premium
Advancing the business creed? The framing of decisions about public sector managed care
Author(s) -
Waitzkin Howard,
Yager Joel,
Santos Richard
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2011.01360.x
Subject(s) - corporation , managed care , public relations , framing (construction) , public sector , creed , business , government (linguistics) , health care , public administration , economics , economic growth , political science , finance , law , linguistics , philosophy , structural engineering , engineering
Abstract Relatively little research has clarified how executives of for‐profit healthcare organisations frame their own motivations and behaviour, or how government officials frame their interactions with executives. Because managed care has provided an organisational structure for health services in many countries, we focused our study on executives and government officials who were administering public sector managed care services. Emphasising theoretically the economic versus non‐economic motivations that guide economic behaviour, we extended a long‐term research project on public sector Medicaid managed care (MMC) in the United States. Our method involved in‐depth, structured interviews with chief executive officers of managed care organisations, as well as high‐ranking officials of state government. Data analysis involved iterative interpretation of interview data. We found that the rate of profit, which proved relatively low in the MMC programme, occupied a limited place in executives’ self‐described motivations and in state officials’ descriptions of corporation‐government interactions. Non‐economic motivations included a strong orientation toward corporate social responsibility and a creed in which market processes advanced human wellbeing. Such patterns contradict some of the given wisdom about how corporate executives and government officials construct their reality.