A critical assessment of factors that are necessary for the effective implementation of equality rights within services provided by Glasgow's housing associations

The key research question with which this thesis is concerned is as follows: what organisational factors are necessary for the effective implementation of equality rights within services provided by Glasgow’s housing associations? This question is important as the implementation of equality matters throughout housing practices is a key legal requirement, as well as being an integral component of regulatory standards produced by the Scottish Housing Regulator. The process of integrating equality rights throughout services is often referred to as mainstreaming of equality. The key factors that the thesis identified as being pertinent were cultural values, organisational policy documentation, communications, performance management and specific human resource matters, in particular staff training and staff attitudes.

In order to identify in what ways social landlords can eliminate discrimination and promote equal opportunities, the study assessed, critically, two research questions. Firstly, what is the role of law in achieving equality objectives and the relationship between the legal framework and social landlords? Secondly, what is the nature of discrimination in contemporary British society? In addressing this second question, the study used an appropriate conceptual framework referred to in the thesis as ESIP to identify what aspects of discrimination social landlords can legitimately address. This evaluation drew on the theoretical perspectives of essentialism and systems theory to identify the nature or essence of social landlords and highlight the importance of adopting a holistic or systemic organisational approach if equality rights are to be implemented effectively.

A further important research issue with which the study was concerned involved a desk-based examination of a comprehensive list of Glasgow Housing association equality policies to ascertain how effectively such policies integrate factors that are essential to implementation of organisational equality policy objectives; these factors are noted above and were identified from a theoretical assessment deriving from the literature review. This examination focussed on service matters as opposed to employment issues. This was then followed by a detailed analysis of housing practices within two individual housing associations in order to gain an overview of factors that might inhibit effective rights implementation into practice. Two key findings of the study can be summarised as follows. Firstly, the study of the organisational equality policies has revealed that none of the equality policies assessed have incorporated, either in sufficient depth or accuracy, the relevant factors that are necessary for effective implementation of equality rights. This derives largely from failure by social landlords to adopt a holistic and systemic approach to organisational practice. Secondly, the empirical study of the two social landlords – although limited in scale – suggests that mainstreaming of equality commitments into practice is unlikely to be achieved without applying the theoretical frameworks proposed in this study.

Although there has been much research into a diverse range of equality matters, there has been no comprehensive theoretical study in the Scottish context of organisational factors that affect the implementation of equality policies in relation to the broad range of equality issues covered by law. This

study represents, then, innovative fieldwork into a hitherto neglected field. Finally, the theoretical and conceptual framework in this study has been developed for specific application to social housing landlords, but its key elements, arguably, extend across other disciplines. A key practical benefit of this study, then, should be to enable organisations to identify diverse forms of discrimination and to implement organisational strategies based on robust theoretical foundations that serve both to eliminate discrimination and to promote equality