Rural Health Co-operatives in China. History and contemporary organisational models

This paper highlights the usefulness of multiple historical perspectives in Organization Studies. It proposes, after a review and classification of much of the existing work, an integrated use of approaches and methods that share an interest in the temporal dimensions of organizational research. The case of the Chinese Rural Medical Cooperative scheme of 1965-1981 is analysed to better understand this organization and to show that it is possible to go beyond the theoretical precincts of sub schools when investigating it. This story is told paying a particular interest in the ways institutions develop and are structured, the theories underpinning them, the changing historical contingencies in which they are situated, the power relations they exemplify and the actors and myths associated with them.