Reference no: EM133163030

Activity

Read Skinner's original paper entitled 'the productivity paradox' (1986). you can access via the NOW Resource list.

Consider whether the productivity paradox still exists today making reference to other sources and your personal experience. You may need to think more broadly about how local measures of cost and efficiency can have negative implications on the wider system.

A health and social care example:

A few years ago, I was involved in a series of meetings concerned with reducing the delayed discharges (sometimes referred to a bed blocking) at an acute hospital. This involved social care services working more cooperatively with the hospital to improve the patient experience as well as relieve the much needed hospital bed capacity. At one of these meeting a social care manager confessed how he had previously prioritised protecting his own £6m budget, commonly delaying the discharge of patients from hospital at the expense of the patients as well as the hospital. As is common to many environments the budgeting system encouraged local thinking, especially evident in complex systems where local performance objectives lead to dysfunctional behaviour:

The old adage is: ‘tell me how you measure me and I will tell you how I will behave' and measuring local cost and efficiency often results in dysfunctional system performance.