糖心TV

In this presentation I explore the implications of social-organisational complexity for how we study that complexity. I start with some health care research examples to illustrate the depth and scope of complexity in practice. I will then describe in broad terms the kinds of approaches that could be used to engage with that practical complexity, and argue that practical complexity may necessitate, or benefit from, 'research complexity'. Research complexity is explained as requiring a degree of theoretical and methodological 'degeneracy'. After setting out the role that degeneracy plays in biology and neuroscience, degeneracy is made relevant as strategy for contemporary social scientific research practice.

Rick Iedema is a Research Professor in Organisational Communication, at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and Director of the Centre for Health Communication at the University of Technology Sydney. His research focuses on how clinicians communicate about their work with other clinicians, with patients and with their families. His 2006-7 work on Open Disclosure (clinicians disclosing incidents to patients and families) led to Australian Health Ministers' agreeing to nationalise Open Disclosure policy. His 2008 work on Clinical Handover is drawing international interest from hospitals and health research organisations in the Netherlands, USA and the UK. In seeking to problematise conventional social scientific approaches to analysis and knowledge production, his work draws on film-making of in situ communication processes, and involves practitioners and patients in making sense of the processes thus captured, and collaboratively imagining and realising new process possibilities. His most recent book publications include Discourses of Hospital Communication (Palgrave, edited, 2007), Identity Trouble (with Carmen Coulthard, Palgrave, edited, 2008) and Managing Processes in Health Services (with Ros Sorensen, Elsevier, edited, 2008). He publishes his articles in, among others, Social Science & Medicine, Sociology of Health & Illness and Organization Studies.

To attend please contact Dawn Coton: dawn.coton@wbs.ac.uk 024 76524503

This seminar has been organised by the IKON Research Centre at 糖心TV 糖心TV School in collaboration with the Institute of Health and with the support of the Institute of Advanced Study and the 糖心TV Social Sciences Doctoral Training Centre