Earlier this month the
Democracy Project hosted by Victoria University published my first article of a two-part series on a very bureaucratic coup against the chief executive and the rest of his senior management team at Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB).
Engagement vs bureaucratic centralist cum command and control leadership conflict
It is often the case that conflicts are driven by personality clashes. Despite perceptions and assertions to the contrary, primarily this escalating dispute involved conflicting leadership cultures between the Ministry of Health (MOH) and CDHB.
The former was bureaucratically centralist and top-down while the latter had a stronger emphasis on engagement with both others in the Canterbury health system and its own workforce.