• Quality improvement through the paradigm of learning

      Hafford-Letchfield, T., Lavender, P.; Lavender, Peter (Emerald, 2015-12-14)
      Purpose – Achieving meaningful participation and co-production for older people in care requires radical approaches. The purpose of this paper is to explore an innovation where learning interventions were introduced into care settings and older people matched to community-based learning mentors to develop partnerships. The authors explore how the concept of learning might be used as a paradigm to raise the quality of care in institutionalised settings using a co-productive and relationship-based approach to promote wellbeing. Design/methodology/approach – A structured evaluation drew on qualitative data captured from interviews with older people (n=25) and learning mentors (n=22) to reflect on the potential benefits and challenges involved when introducing learning interventions in care settings. This was contextualised alongside data captured from stakeholders (n=10) including a care home manager, social care and education commissioners, trustees and project staff to assess the interdisciplinary contribution of lifelong learning to quality improvement. Findings – Introducing learning interventions to older people within care settings promoted participation, advocacy and relationship-based care which in turn helped to create a positive culture. Given the current challenges to improve quality in care services, drawing on a paradigm of learning may encourage older people to retain their independence as care homes strive towards a person-centred approach. Promoting social activities and leisure using learning was found to foster closer working relationships between older people and the wider community. These had a levelling effect through reciprocity, using an asset based approach. There were benefits for the care provider as the partnerships formed enabled people to raise both individual and collective concerns about care and support. Originality/value – Raising and sustaining the quality of support for older people requires input from the wider public sector beyond health and social care. Purposeful engagement with other disciplines such as learning and leisure offers the potential to realise a more sustainable model of user choice, person-centred support and user involvement. Being engaged through learning can nourish membership in the community for marginalised populations such as older people living in care homes.
    • The Quality and Ethics Connection: Toward Virtuous Organizations.

      Ahmed, Pervaiz K.; Machold, Silke (Routledge (Taylor & Francis), 2004)
      Quality as a philosophy of management practice has become widely embedded in organizational mindsets. This paper looks at the fundamental theories of ethics and morality, and shows how these and a fuller consideration of these can lead to better practice of social responsibility through a higher platform of quality, which we call quality consciousness. The paper shows that business actions, and indeed the pedagogy of management theory, are not in themselves amoral. Rather, they are driven by a systematic reflection of the context. The paper develops the implication of this for the extension and strengthening of the concept of quality by delineating the definitional boundary of quality, and then scrutinizing the philosophy of quality and the philosophy of virtue and morality to examine conceptual inter-linkage and symbiosis. The paper promulgates a view of quality that explicitly incorporates virtue as part of the quality paradigm. The paper then charts how the rigorous incorporation of ethics and organizational morality can be made in quality management, and how this will lead to the next stage of evolution in quality theory and the role this new heightened sense will play in better managerial practice of corporate social responsibility. By critique, the paper develops a tentative framework to move toward the virtuous organization. This, the paper suggests, is the next stage of quality evolution.
    • The rhetoric and reality of “quality” in higher education: An investigation into staff perceptions of quality in post 1992 universities

      Cartwright, Martin J. (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2007)
      Purpose – The paper aims to describe research undertaken in two post-1992 universities into staff perceptions of and reactions to the rhetoric of the national quality agenda in the UK as expressed by bodies such as the Quality Assurance Agency and the discourse about quality implicit in that agenda. The research examined how academic staff engaged with the discourse and the extent to which the rhetoric of quality is reflected in the day-to-day realities of post-1992 universities. Design/methodology/approach – The research involved a qualitative investigation of the personal experiences of six academics employed in two post-1992 universities and comprised in-depth interviews around three themes which were undertaken during 2005 and 2006. The data from the interviews are summarised and paraphrased in a way which faithfully and accurately captures the sense and spirit of each of the interviews as validated by the interviewees. Findings – The paper concludes that from the point of view of the academic staff who formed part of this research there is a considerable mismatch between the rhetoric of the official paragons of quality represented by the Quality Assurance Agency and the experience of quality by academic staff embroiled in the quality systems that the two universities involved in this research had developed as a consequence of the requirements of government and government agencies. Originality/value – This paper will be of interest to academics and academic managers with responsibilities for quality assurance not only in universities with mature quality assurance systems but also in those in which such systems are being introduced or developed.