Publications

Since the early 1980s all European countries have given priority to reforming the management of health services. A distinctive feature of these reforms has also been the drive to co-opt professionals themselves into the management of services, taking on full time or part time (hybrid) management or leadership roles. However, although these trends are well documented in the literature, our understanding of the nature and impact of reforms and how they are re-shaping the relationship between medicine and management remains limited. Most studies have tended to be nationally specific, located within a single discipline and focused primarily on describing new management practices. This article serves as an Introduction to a special issue of BMC Health Services Research which seeks to address these concerns. It builds on the work of a European Union funded COST Action (ISO903) which ran between 2009 and 2013, focusing specifically on the changing relationship between medicine and management in a European context.

The Conference on Multiphase Polymers and Polymer Composites Systems: Macro to Nano Scales was organized at Paris-Est Créteil University, France on June 7-10, 2011. It was organized within the framework of the COST action MP0701 on Polymer and nonocomposites and was dedicated to many of the recent research accomplishments in the area of physical and interfacial properties of multiphase polymer composites and nanocomposite systems.