Responding to employee-based race inequalities in National Health Service (England): accountability and the Workforce Race Equality Standard
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
ISSN: 0951-3574
Article publication date: 2 September 2024
Issue publication date: 1 October 2024
Abstract
Purpose
This paper examines the efforts of National Health Service (England) (NHSE) to respond to employee-based racial inequalities via its Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES). The WRES constitutes a hybridised accountability initiative with characteristics of the moral and imposed regimes of accountability.
Design/methodology/approach
The study conceptualises the notion of responsive race accountability with recourse to Favotto et al.’s (2022) moral accountability model and critical race theory (CRT), and through it, examines the enactment of WRES at 40 NHSE trusts using qualitative content analysis.
Findings
Despite the progressive nature of the WRES that seeks to nurture corrective actions, results suggest that trusts tend to adopt an instrumental approach to the exercise. Whilst there is some evidence of good practice, the instrumental approach prevails across both the metric reporting that trusts engage in to guide their actions, and the planned actions for progress. These planned actions not only often fail to coalesce with the trust-specific data but also include generic NHSE or equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives and mimetic adoptions of best practice guidance that only superficially address racial concerns.
Social implications
Whilst the WRES is a laudable voluntary achievement, its moral imperative does not appear to have translated into a moral accountability within individual trusts.
Originality/value
Responding to calls for more research at the accounting-race nexus, this study uniquely draws on CRT to conceptualise and examine race accountability.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the two reviewers and the handling editor, Professor Gloria Agyemang, for their valuable thoughts and advice that enhanced the final manuscript. The authors are also grateful to the participants at the Race, Accounting and Accountability Workshop hosted by Cardiff University in September 2022 whose views and suggestions helped inform the study.
Citation
Dhanani, A., Chaidali, P., Sharma, N. and Varoutsa, E. (2024), "Responding to employee-based race inequalities in National Health Service (England): accountability and the Workforce Race Equality Standard", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 37 No. 7/8, pp. 1665-1694. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-08-2023-6621
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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