Dr Diane Burns
BSc, MSc, PGCE, PhD
Management School
Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies
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+44 114 222 3216
Full contact details
Management School
Room B029
Sheffield University Management School
Conduit Road
Sheffield
S10 1FL
- Profile
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Dr Diane Burns joined the Management School in 2012 as Lecturer in Organization Studies. Before joining the Management School she was a Research Fellow in the School of Allied Health Professions at the University of East Anglia.
Diane holds a PhD from the Discourse Unit Manchester Metropolitan University (now at the University of Manchester), UK.
She also holds a MSc in Occupational Psychology from Birkbeck College, University of London and a 1st Class Honours Degree in Psychology from Manchester Metropolitan University.
Diane's primary research is the area of health and social care organization using ethnographic, participatory and action research methodologies.
She is a member of the Institute of Work Psychology and the Work, Employment Relations Research Centre (WOERRC) located within the Management School and was an International Visiting Scholar to the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University in 2015.
- Research interests
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Diane's research interests are focused on the instability/stability of the social care system in the UK. Her work seeks to address this issue through three interconnecting themes:
- Workforce and care quality
- Institutional abuse and mistreatment
- Social innovation and homecare
Previously funded through two grants from the Department of Health and Comic Relief (2009-2013), Diane and colleagues have examined the organizational dynamics and features of 'good' and 'poor' care quality, including abuse and mistreatment in residential care homes.
Since 2016 her focus has expanded to include the financialisation of residential care home chains and the need for social innovation in the provision of homecare. Diane has co-wrote 2 CRESC public interest reports.
The Doing Care Differently project, led by Diane, to pilot different ways of doing homecare has recently won a Wellcome Trust Seed Award 2017-18.
Diane is a member of the Leadership Group of the large ESRC-sponsored multi-disciplinary, multi-site programme ‘Sustainable Care – connecting people and systems’ (SC) 2017-2021, based in the Centre for International Research on Care, Labour & Equalities [CIRCLE], Faculty of Social Science.
The programme brings together a team of 19 academics from seven universities, linked to an extended network of international academic partners in 15 other countries. Diane is leading the work-package, ‘Delivering care at home: emerging models and their implications for sustainable wellbeing'.
- Publications
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Books
Journal articles
- Is it time for job quality? Conceptualising temporal arrangements in new models of homecare. Sociology of Health & Illness.
- Innovation in UK independent homecare services : a thematic narrative review. Health & Social Care in the Community, 30(6), e3447-e3458.
- A Visual Turn for Organizational Ethnography: Embodying the Subject in Video-Based Research. Organization Studies, 39(10), 1403-1424.
- Negotiating and valuing spaces: The discourse of space and ‘home’ in care homes. Health and Place, 43, 8-16. View this article in WRRO
- How Financial Cutbacks Affect the Quality of Jobs and Care for the Elderly. ILR Review, 69(4), 991-1016. View this article in WRRO
- Digging deep: how organisational culture affects care home residents' experiences. Ageing and Society, 36(01), 160-188. View this article in WRRO
- Digging deep: how organisational culture affects care home residents' experiences – ERRATUM. Ageing and Society, 36(1), 224-224.
- Organisational aspects of elder mistreatment in long term care. Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, 15(4), 197-209. View this article in WRRO
- Colonizing the Aged Body and the Organization of Later Life. Organization Studies, 35(11), 1699-1717. View this article in WRRO
- Participatory Organizational Research: Examining Voice in the Co-production of Knowledge. British Journal of Management, 25(1), 133-144.
- Wicked problems or wicked people? Reconceptualising institutional abuse. Sociology of Health and Illness: a journal of medical sociology, 35(4), 514-528. View this article in WRRO
- How organisational arrangements affect service provision. Nursing and Residential Care, 15(10), 676-679.
- How organizational factors interact to influence the quality of care of older people in the care home sector. Journal of Health Services Research and Policy, 18(Suppl 1), 14-22. View this article in WRRO
- Behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia and their management in care homes within the East of England: a postal survey. Aging and Mental Health.
- Feminism, psychology and social policy: Constructing political boundaries at the grassroots. FEMINISM & PSYCHOLOGY, 10(3), 367-380. View this article in WRRO
- Practices of citizenship: Inter-linking community, work and family in a national single parent organisation. Community, Work & Family, 3(3), 261-277.
- ‘Happy Families?’: Single Mothers, the Press and the Politicians. Capital & Class, 22(1), 1-11. View this article in WRRO
- Technology and homecare in the UK: policy, storylines and practice. Journal of Social Policy.
Chapters
- Managing Healthcare Organisations in Challenging Policy Contexts: Connections and Contradictions, Managing Healthcare Organisations in Challenging Policy Contexts (pp. 1-22).
- Concluding Comments: Voice as a Common Theme Across Studies of Healthcare Management in Challenging Policy Contexts, Managing Healthcare Organisations in Challenging Policy Contexts (pp. 301-313).
- Reconceptualizing Institutional Abuse: Formulating Problems and Solutions in Residential Care In Keaton M, McDermott AM & Montgomery K (Ed.), Patient-Centred Health Care. Organizational Behaviour in Health Care London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Conference proceedings papers
- View this article in WRRO
- Video-based Ethnographic Documentary: Toward Collaborative Organizational Research. Academy of Management Proceedings, Vol. 2016(1) (pp 10066-10066) View this article in WRRO
Reports
- View this article in WRRO
- View this article in WRRO
Presentations
Other
- View this article in WRRO
- Is it time for job quality? Conceptualising temporal arrangements in new models of homecare. Sociology of Health & Illness.
- Research group
- Teaching interests
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Diane has a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning & Teaching in Higher Education and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Her learning and teaching practice is underpinned by constructivist and active learning approaches which she uses to inform course design, delivery and evaluation.
She is passionate about creating learning and teaching environments that fosters students' engagement, facilitates their learning and supports their development of critical thinking.
- Professional activities and memberships
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- PhD Supervision
Diane is interested in supervising doctoral research in the following areas:
- Care work and the social care workforce
- Dark side of organisation – abuse, mistreatment, exploitation and resistance
- Social innovation in the organisation and delivery of social care
- Ethnographic, participatory, action methodologies - particularly the use of visual methods, poetics and film
Diane currently supervises:
She has previously supervised:
Name Thesis title Year of completion Arbaz Kapadi For Whose Benefit? Service User Involvement, Co-Production and Healthcare Quality Improvement 2023 Juan Pablo Winter Power dynamics and subalterns' organising in an informal settlement: A Participatory Action Research in South Africa 2022 Rosie Westerveld Partnerships, power & privilege: A critical investigation of development partnerships between UK & Nepal civil society organisations 2021 Are you interested in applying for a PhD?