Working Paper: Understanding the Healthcare Context - A Review of Management and Organization Studies in the Medical Field

Healthcare as a management practice has received increased scholarly attention over the past three decades. However, it has remained fragmented as a field and not adequately contextualized in management and organization studies (MOS). The failure to embed the literature in its contextual setting risks limiting the potential for advances in MOS. Based on 166 articles published in high-impact journals between 1990 and 2022, this review addresses this fragmentation by offering a comprehensive and up-to-date summary of MOS undertaken in healthcare, detailing its distinctive traits and underlying dynamics. Identifying directions for future research and defining areas of tension as contextual boundary objects will increase the cumulative potential of MOS literature in healthcare and provide a basis for the appropriate contextualization of theoretical contributions.