A multi-method approach for looking inside healthcare practices

Purpose: The paper explores a specific multi-method approach with which to detect and analyze professional practices in order to support organizational reflection and change. Methodology/approach: Based on a case study, the paper describes the methodological choices made during the research process. The qualitative potentials of narrative and ethnographic orientations, and a package of data gathering tools, are analyzed in depth. Findings: The paper presents the advantages and drawbacks of tools to articulate practices and to develop hypotheses for change. It emphasizes the approach’s innovative value and potential in contributing to knowledge sharing in organizations, and the implications for researchers and participants. Practical implications: The paper furnishes concrete suggestions on how practitioners and researchers/consultants can be induced to pay particular attention to aspects of the operational knowledge that should accompany change processes. This appears even more strategic in healthcare organizations, characterized by the constant need to update the operational system in response to the introduction of new technologies, procedures, and protocols. Originality/value: The paper discusses how research dimensions and results can be linked with action practices, while at the same time reducing the divide between researcher and practitioner. The value of the paper is that it presents tools known in the literature but analyzes them in regard to their use in real settings concerned with real-world problems.