Assembling Homo Qualitus: Accounting for Quality in the UK National Health Service

Dane Pflueger and Kirstine Zinck Pedersen

European Accounting Review, 2023, vol. 32, issue 4, 875-902

Abstract: This paper describes the historical emergence of an accountable quality in public policies and reforms of the UK National Health Service: that is a notion of quality which is expressed through accounting and other formal measurement and management devices. It also specifies the idealized subject of an accountable quality, homo qualitus, and attends to instances of his/her incomplete realization. Doing so contributes to the problematization and rethinking of the way that accounting, professionalism, and the relationship between the two, are often understood. It shows that an accountable quality involves attempts to transform accounting from something external to, and imposed upon, or selectively adopted by, medical professionals into a measure of, in principle, any healthcare workers’ individual enthusiasm for, and commitment toward, quality itself. The incomplete nature of this transformation offers insights into complex ways in which discourse and practice may interact.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09638180.2022.2035789 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:euract:v:32:y:2023:i:4:p:875-902

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REAR20

DOI: 10.1080/09638180.2022.2035789

Access Statistics for this article

European Accounting Review is currently edited by Laurence van Lent

More articles in European Accounting Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().