Journal of Social Equity and Public Administration

Pathways for Social Equity: An Audit of Bureaucratic Representation, Diversity, and Cultural Competency in Florida Nursing Homes

Austin M. McCrea

Texas Tech University

Kenicia Wright

Arizona State University

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5727-5908

Xiaoyang Xu

Georgetown University

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5970-1739

Noah Pruitt

Texas Tech University

https://orcid.org/0009-0009-3205-4154

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24926/jsepa.v3i1.5656

Keywords: Social Equity, Representative Bureaucracy, Diversity, Cultural Competency

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Abstract

Social equity is a central concern in public service provision. As a concept, social equity is comprised of several disparate concepts including representative bureaucracy, diversity management, and cultural competency, each focusing on a specific function necessary for achieving equitable processes, outputs, and outcomes. While many organizations implement reforms across all three of these dimensions simultaneously, existing applications in the literature tend to only focus on one at a time—potentially obfuscating the true impact of social equity reforms within public organizations. By constructing a dataset of over 600 nursing homes in Florida, our descriptive analysis reveals that nursing homes are unrepresentative, lack diversity, and tend to provide culturally competent care in underperforming homes. We further examine the sectoral differences between for-profit homes and not-for-profit. Our article contributes to the literature by providing an in-depth audit of how nursing homes practice representation, diversity, and cultural competency.

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Author Biographies

Austin M. McCrea, Texas Tech University

Austin M. McCrea (he/him/his) (austin.mccrea@ttu.edu) is an assistant professor of public administration in the Department of Political Science at Texas Tech University. He is interested in questions of representation, diversity, bureaucratic coping, and street-level bureaucracy. Most of this work has a substantive focus on high-risk, time-critical public service delivery.

Kenicia Wright, Arizona State University

Dr. Kenicia Wright (she/her/hers) (Kenicia.Wright@asu.edu) is an assistant professor at Arizona State University. In her work, she often applies intersectionality and explores the effects of diversity, representation, and contexts with an overarching aim of identifying ways to improve social equity for vulnerable groups in U.S. society.

Xiaoyang Xu, Georgetown University

Xiaoyang Xu (she/her/hers) (xx149@georgetown.edu) is a post-doctoral fellow at the McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University. Her research interests include equal access to public services, representative bureaucracy, and public management.

Noah Pruitt, Texas Tech University

Noah Pruitt (he/him/his) (nopruitt@ttu.edu) is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at Texas Tech University. His primary research interests focus on the determinants of democratic attitudes in Latin America and the negative externalities of economic sanctions, with a growing interest in public administration.

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