Thought and action: change to the customer in community pharmacy practice

Everyday around the world, managers do seek to transform their ideas into realized action. In the traditional sense of management science, we would expect a rather linear process. Managers start with intention, and after some time and effort they realize action. However, nothing is further from the truth. The process from intention to realization, respectively labelled as thought and action in this thesis, is dynamic and complex. Intentions are modified, drop out, or may even remain intended; activities never intended get realized and evoke new intentions, et cetera. Only some of the intended activities will be transformed into realized action in a linear process. Whereas the term ‘activity’ relates to a description of the ‘modelled world’, does the term ‘action’ relate to observations in the ‘real world’. In this first line of thought a difference between thought and action appears to be inevitable. It is quite clear these days that change in intentions is common practice for managers. It is in fact the core of a never-ending learning process. We have tried to ‘catch’ some managerial problems in order to enhance such a learning process. In this present thesis, thought and action were studied in the specific context of community pharmacy practice in the Netherlands.