Management of retirement and nursing homes

Demographic change, privatisation and growing staff shortages are the structural conditions that determine the elderly care sector. Economic scarcity has also come to characterise the care home landscape. Nevertheless, it would fall short of the mark to simply lament "economisation" unidirectionally. Even if the situation is not easy, it does open up room for manoeuvre for the individual homes where there was none before.

Against this background, care homes offer good conditions for developing individual profiles - both positive and negative - compared to hospitals, for example. Overall, the field is characterised by a high degree of diversity, ranging from small family businesses and traditional homes run by public and non-profit organisations to precarious "low-cost homes" and elegant "residences". There is a multitude of viable solutions that meet the challenges of the sector in different ways.

Nevertheless, we know practically nothing about the different ways in which care homes deal with economic, ethical, nursing and regulatory requirements and the subsequent problems that the homes have to contend with. The research project aims to fill this gap and shed light on the different strategies and practices with which care homes position themselves in the field and (more or less successfully) assert themselves.

This is based on the assumption that the respective internal and external tensions of the organisation are reflected in the management of the homes and are reintroduced into the organisation as a distinction. Thus, not only the relevant social rationales and regimes can be identified in management, but also how they are dealt with. It thus condenses the field of tension in which the entire organisation operates and reveals the trajectory of the corresponding arrangement in its practice.