Professor Ewan Ferlie

Ewan Ferlie is Professor of Public Services Management with research interests in the organization and management of public services, both UK and internationally. He specialises in studying health and social care organizations and also higher education. His projects and publications often address major issues of public policy and management concern and so potentially contribute to public service improvement and more evidence informed and effective public management reforms.

He co-teaches a course on the organization and management of the public services on the MSc in Public Policy and Management and will teach next session an Intercalated BSc course on Strategy, Organizations and Change in health care for medical and bio science undergraduates.

His areas of expertise include:

• models and narratives of public management reform including New Public Management and
• post NPM approaches, including co creation of public services;
• patterns of organizational change, innovation and restructuring in Public Services
• Organizations;
• the roles of and relationships between professionals, managers and others;
• the applicability of various schools of strategic management in such settings;
• Evidence Based policy and practice in health care settings;

Ewan has published widely in leading academic journals, including the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Public Administration and Theory, Organization Studies, Human Relations and Public Administration. He has published various monographs with leading academic publishers (such as Oxford University Press, Routledge and Sage), often based on findings from his research projects. He has been co editor of the Oxford Handbook of Public Management and the Oxford Handbook of Health care Management, both published by Oxford University Press.

Ewan is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS, elected 2008) and a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA, elected 2016).

Ewan has held many research grants from such sources as the NIHR, NHS, EU Horizon 2020 programme and ESRC. He is currently a Co Investigator in three major research projects. Many of these projects address important aspects of public policy concern.

The first project is on collaborative forms of government across Europe (COGOV, funded by the EU Horizon 2020 R and D programme. This large scale project is examining moves towards co creation and co production in public agencies which may rebuild public trust in government and also associated approaches to strategic management.

The second is ASPIRES (ASPIRES: Antibiotic use across Surgical Pathways - Investigating, Redesigning and Evaluating Systems). Antimicrobial resistance is a major issue in health policy. This large and international project seeks to optimise antibiotic usage along surgical pathways by addressing questions of antimicrobial resistance and improving clinical outcomes. Some Low and Middle Income Countries are part of the consortium. ASPIRES is funded by the ESRC and led by Imperial College. It contains a strategic management orientated work package where Ewan is a CI. More recent work extended this collaboration to examining countries’ strategic responses to COVID.

The third project is SASCI, led by the LSE and again funded by ESRC. This national collaboration looks at innovation in the key area of adult social care within England, where Ewan works on the literature review work package. The SASCI project aims to build evidence about how to support the adult social care sector to start up, implement and spread affordable innovations.

Ewan has been a non executive director of Warwickshire Health Authority and a member of the national advisory board for the National Institute of Health Authority.

Research Profile

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