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Medicalization represents an increasingly significant form of social control. Emergent evidence suggests that workplace managers take up medicalized practices and discourses to produce a compliant labor force, but this phenomenon has received limited sociological attention. This paper extends prior theories of medicalization to investigate therapeutic management in the low-wage workplace. I draw upon eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in Disability Works, a nonprofit job training program for people with mental illnesses, and interviews with other providers and advocates within this field. Disability Works harnesses therapy, psychiatry, and "softer" therapeutic practices such as mindfulness meditation, sleep hygiene, and positive affirmations to produce its workforce. This paper identifies two dimensions of therapeutic management: (1) it aims to inculcate work norms at the level of client-workers' embodied dispositions, and (2) it aims to transform structural problems into individual ones. Findings illuminate therapeutic management as an emergent workplace regime and may guide future research on its effects. • "Therapeutic management" is an emergent managerial style. • Ethnographic fieldwork and interviews illustrate practices of therapeutic management. • This style draws on therapy, psychiatry, and pseudo-therapeutic practices. • Therapeutic management aims to inculcate work norms at the dispositional level. • Therapeutic management aims to transform structural problems into individual ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Conditional reimbursement policies are increasingly viewed as promising instruments for expensive yet uncertain technologies and pharmaceuticals. • There is paucity of empirical research investigating how conditional reimbursement policies play out in practice. • We study two cases of conditional reimbursement in the context of Dutch healthcare and identify three key tensions: proceduralism versus improvisation, steering professionals versus providing leeway, and involving patients as data subjects versus legitimate stakeholders. • The notion of 'epistemic entanglements' highlights how normative and scientific dimensions are interwoven in reimbursement decisions. HTA agencies are experimenting with conditional reimbursement approaches allowing greater flexibility to cope with epistemic uncertainties generated by new health technologies and pharmaceuticals lacking evidence. While some research into promises and effects of conditional reimbursement is conducted, little empirical research investigates how such policies play out in practice. In this paper, we analyze two cases of conditional reimbursement in the Netherlands. Case studies were purposively selected. We conducted document analysis combined with semi-structured in-depth interviews (n = 28). We analyzed both case studies together through initial thematic analysis and additional abductive analysis. Results were verified through data triangulation. We performed a member check in which we presented our preliminary analysis during a reflection meeting with key stakeholders. We identified three tensions in the practices of CED-schemes: proceduralism versus improvisation, steering professionals versus providing leeway, involving patients as data subjects versus legitimate stakeholders. These tensions explicate several sources of epistemic uncertainties that extend beyond methodological and more well-known socio-political pressures such as from industry on regular reimbursement decision-making process. We note the importance of improvisation work, of normative considerations, and of epistemic hierarchies. We postulate that the emerging uncertainties within the practice of CED-schemes are to an extent unavoidable as they emerge from the necessarily interactive and normative nature of human relations. We conceptualize this with the notion of 'epistemic entanglements', which highlights how normative and scientific dimensions are interwoven in reimbursement decisions. As epistemic uncertainties are difficult to reduce and tame in practice the need for a more reflexive and inclusive approach to conditional reimbursement decision-making becomes apparent. New technologies and personalized medicines can have great health benefits for patients, but often not enough knowledge is available to assess whether these innovations live up to their expectations. At the same time, despite this uncertainty, governments need to make a decision about whether or not to reimburse these innovations. Many countries are experimenting with forms of conditional reimbursement: temporarily reimbursement of technologies until more evidence is collected regarding (cost-)effectiveness in practice. Although much literature addresses potential benefits and drawbacks of conditional reimbursement policies, few studies look into how such policies play out in practice. In our research we study two examples of conditional reimbursement practices. We show conditional reimbursement practices lead to three new tensions. We conclude that HTA agencies would benefit from approaches that recognize that evidence-development and normative considerations are intertwined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]