Introduction

This book is the culmination of the research of a number of Australian scholars in the fields of employment relations, health policy, health sociology, health economics and health services management. In the first instance it arises from the three editors’ doctoral studies, carried out between 1994 and 2004. We began our PhD research at a time when healthcare reform was high on the agenda in Australia; we were concerned with the impact of these reforms on the work of various health professionals and on the quality of care extended to patients. During this period we found ourselves presenting work-in-progress papers at the Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand (AIRAANZ) annual conferences and other related conferences. Sometimes the conference organizers would program us in the same session, for example making health a case study in employment relations, at other times we were separated by themes such as human resource management, enterprise bargaining, casualization, labour flexibility or working time. Through this process we discovered other academics with similar interests and it became clear that while there were many similarities in our investigations, there were also differences in our research approach, discipline orientation or theoretical explanations.