Introduction

The first few months of 2010 were the coldest that the UK had experienced in 30 years. Heavy snow had covered many areas and had brought the country to a standstill. Then in early April the snow thawed as the sun came out to welcome the delegates to the 7th Biennial in Organisational Behaviour in Health Care (OBHC) conference, held in the pleasant environs of the University of Birmingham’s Edgbaston campus. This conference is a key meeting for members of the Society for the Study of Organising Health Care (SHOC) and was highly successful, attracting over 150 academics and practitioners from across the globe with an interest in understanding heath care organisations and change. The title of the conference was ‘Mind the Gap: policy and practice in the reform of healthcare’. Visiting academics were invited to share their expertise, and present and discuss papers that explored how health care organisations shape, adapt and resist developments in health care policy and practice.