Determine Care Quality: customer satisfaction as matters of concern

1. Determine Care Quality:customer satisfaction as matters of concern Discussant: Tairan Kevin Huang University of Wollongong

2. Matters of Concern • How does a university “control” education quality? • How does Toyota “control” product quality? • How does an accounting firm “control” service quality? • What exactly is “quality”? The paper “Determine Care Quality: customer satisfaction as matters of concern” reveals that “things” or “matters” like quality, “is difficult (if not possible) to control from a distance”

3. Overview of the Paper • Purpose:providing an analysis on “the struggles of control over care quality and customer satisfaction in aged care” • Theoretical Framework: Agential Realism (Karen Barad) is applied to reveal the social construction of “quality” and “customer satisfaction” • Research Design: A case study on an aged care facility, field study was used to examine the integrated control system which the facility used to manage quality.

4. Agential Realism • Developed by the feminist theorist and theoretical physicist Karen Barad, based on studies of quantum physics • According to the theory, “matters” emerge through "the ontological inseparability of intra-acting agencies“ • The intra-actions, indicate that everything is entangled and connected with everything. The “control” of certain matter involves a cut between what is included and excluded from what is being considered. • The study, or the observation of these matters (e.g. Care Quality) also require the cut to be made before the matters can be examined.

5. The Case Study • Reveals the indeterminacies of the matter of concerns • The term “good aged care” is not comprehensively defined and is currently debated • Based on the investigation of Wonton City aged care’s control system, assessment tools and discussion with different personnel, the author concludes that although customer satisfaction is always a serious concern, the actual measure of the matter contains inconsistency and indeterminacy.

6. Key Findings • The “matters” – “care quality” and “customer satisfaction” are in fact many fluid “intra-actions” which are held together dynamically. • These matters themselves, are ever-changing, evolving, and are subject to different interpretations. Both the integration (“endorse sameness”) and differentiation are important for “controlling” these matters. • The role accounting plays – controlling, measuring and accounting for “these matters”, but with struggle, inconsistency and indeterminacy

7. Implications • This paper argues that in order to be able to “control” these matters of concern, the managers need to “be more engaged with practical realities”. It is beyond the provision of accounting information (Stakeholders of an aged care facilities concern more about first hand experience rather than the accounting disclosure) • The false assumption that management will always benefit from their choices of accounting practises leads to “the myth of management's efficacy” • The power to include or exclude measures leave the management in a struggle and in a “vulnerable position”

8. Strength • The paper is very clearly communicated, the idea is progressive introduced and explained, it made the theme easily accessible by the readers • Draws parallel to many other current issues and matters of concern, inspires future research • Defamiliarise the understanding of these matters of concerns, reveals the struggles and inconsistencies embedded in the process when accounting for these matters

9. Future Application? • How to improve aged care, once we understood that the measurement, disclosure and control of care quality is a lot more complicated than how it looks.