IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/euract/v10y2001i3p545-560.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Managed health care perspectives: a study of management accounting reforms on managing financial difficulties in a health care organization

Author

Listed:
  • Lars-Goran Aidemark

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of two accounting reforms on managing financial difficulties in a health care organization. At the beginning of the 1990s, Kronoberg County Council, a health care organization with more than 7,000 employees, was exposed to a strained financial situation. The County Council Assembly decided on a radical retrenchment policy. To make this policy workable, the management accounting system was subject to two major reforms: responsibility accounting and an internal market system. A longitudinal study was carried out between 1992 and 1997. To understand the development, four different conceptual models have been used in the study: the institutional theorist's perspective, a conceptual framework for the design of organizational control mechanisms, the importance of receptive contexts and the concept of 'appreciative judgement'. Each of these frameworks contributes a different interpretation of the reforms. The study gives support to Pettigrew's theory on the contextual dependency of strategic change. A disciplining context made it possible to balance income and expenditure. Budget planning and responsibility accounting were powerful tools when this balancing strategy was carried out. The internal market system was not a solution to the problem. In this context, it threatened to aggravate the financial problem.

Suggested Citation

  • Lars-Goran Aidemark, 2001. "Managed health care perspectives: a study of management accounting reforms on managing financial difficulties in a health care organization," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(3), pages 545-560.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:euract:v:10:y:2001:i:3:p:545-560
    DOI: 10.1080/713764627
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/713764627
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/713764627?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chua, Wai-Fong & Degeling, Pieter, 1993. "Interrogating an accounting-based intervention on three axes: Instrumental, moral and aesthetic," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 291-318, May.
    2. William G. Ouchi, 1979. "A Conceptual Framework for the Design of Organizational Control Mechanisms," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(9), pages 833-848, September.
    3. Argyris, Chris, 1977. "Organizational learning and management information systems," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 113-123, March.
    4. Hopwood, Anthony G., 1983. "On trying to study accounting in the contexts in which it operates," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 8(2-3), pages 287-305, May.
    5. Morgan, Gareth, 1988. "Accounting as reality construction: Towards a new epistemology for accounting practice," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 13(5), pages 477-485, August.
    6. Preston, Alistair M., 1992. "The birth of clinical accounting: A study of the emergence and transformations of discourses on costs and practices of accounting in U.S. hospitals," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 63-100, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Buriachenko Andrii Y. & Zhyber Tetiana V. & Paientko Tetiana, 2020. "Managerial accounting in the implementation of deliverology using the example of Ukraine," Central European Economic Journal, Sciendo, vol. 7(54), pages 72-83, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rosanna Spanò & Adele Caldarelli & Luca Ferri & Marco Maffei, 2020. "Context, culture and control: a case study on accounting change in an Italian regional health service," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 24(1), pages 229-272, March.
    2. Lai, Alessandro & Leoni, Giulia & Stacchezzini, Riccardo, 2014. "The socializing effects of accounting in flood recovery," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 25(7), pages 579-603.
    3. Andrea Fried, 2017. "Terminological distinctions of ‘control’: a review of the implications for management control research in the context of innovation," Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 5-40, February.
    4. Miller, Peter & Kurunmäki, Liisa & O'Leary, Ted, 2008. "Accounting, hybrids and the management of risk," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 33(7-8), pages 942-967.
    5. Speklé, R.F., 2002. "Towards a Transaction Cost Theory of Management Control," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2002-06-F&A, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    6. Ahblom, Per & Sjögren, Ebba, 2019. "Delivering performance: the capital market framing of financial numbers from a preparer perspective," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 102819, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Granlund, Markus & Lukka, Kari, 2017. "Investigating highly established research paradigms: Reviving contextuality in contingency theory based management accounting research," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 63-80.
    8. Mark A. Covaleski & Mark W. Dirsmith & Clinton E. White, 1987. "Economie consequences: The relationship between financial reporting and strategic planning, management and operating control decisions," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 3(2), pages 408-429, March.
    9. Speklé, R.F., 2003. "Configurations of Control: A Transaction Cost Approach," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2003-071-F&A, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    10. Charl de Villiers & Matteo La Torre & Vida Botes, 2022. "Accounting and social capital: A review and reflections on future research opportunities," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(4), pages 4485-4521, December.
    11. Binti Shofiatul Jannah, 2021. "The Meaning of "Accounting" In a Religious-Based Organization," GATR Journals afr200, Global Academy of Training and Research (GATR) Enterprise.
    12. Gun Abrahamsson & Hans Englund & Jonas Gerdin, 2011. "Organizational identity and management accounting change," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 24(3), pages 345-376, March.
    13. Langfield-Smith, Kim, 1997. "Management control systems and strategy: A critical review," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 207-232, February.
    14. Garry Carnegie & Lee Parker & Eva Tsahuridu, 2021. "It's 2020: What is Accounting Today?," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 31(1), pages 65-73, March.
    15. Bottausci, Chiara & Robson, Keith & Dambrin, Claire, 2024. "Technological mediation, mediating morality and moral imaginaries of design: Performance measurement systems in the pharmaceutical industry," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    16. Vaivio, J., 2006. "The accounting of "The Meeting": Examining calculability within a "Fluid" local space," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 31(8), pages 735-762, November.
    17. Davie, Shanta S.K., 2008. "An autoethnography of accounting knowledge production: Serendipitous and fortuitous choices for understanding our social world," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 19(7), pages 1054-1079.
    18. Joanne Lye & Zahirul Hoque & Lee Parker, 2021. "How do employees learn from performance measures? Evidence from a local government entity," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(2), pages 3443-3480, June.
    19. Balluchi, Federica & Lazzini, Arianna & Torelli, Riccardo, 2021. "Accounting and music: The role of Giuseppe Verdi in shaping the 19th century culture industry," OSF Preprints 5hz87, Center for Open Science.
    20. Gebreiter, Florian, 2016. "“Comparing the incomparable”: Hospital costing and the art of medicine in post-war Britain," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 257-268.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:euract:v:10:y:2001:i:3:p:545-560. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/REAR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.