A resource based view of palliative care teams

Much has been written on the practice of managing operations in the manufacturing sector and, increasingly, in the service sector. The focus of much of this work is still however on those organizations motivated by the need to compete and generate a profit. The existing literature on the strategic management of operations may well have failed to influence many managers in the field. This paper attempts to look at the role of managing operations in what may be an even more difficult field, the area of palliative care in not-for-profit organizations. It is possible to think of the organization as a productive function, and this may ground one approach to strategizing within the operations function. An alternative perspective conceptualises the organisation as a governance structure, and in this form, the process of strategizing within the operations function is problematic. This paper reviews the role of managing operations, based heavily on the resource based view of the organisation, and uses material based on the experiences in palliative care organisations to illustrate aspects of strategizing within the operations function.