CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue of Accounting Forum

 “Accounting and Accountability Challenges in Healthcare Systems”

Guest Editors:

Massimo Sargiacomo, University G.d’Annunzio of Chieti-Pescara

(msargiacomo@unich.it)

and

Anja Kern,  Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State UniversityMosbach

(anja.kern@mosbach.dhbw.de)

 Much time has passed since the early investigations on the birth of clinical accounting (e.g. Bourn and Ezzamel, 1986; Abernethy and Stoelwinder, 1990; Preston, 1992), and yet there is still much to learn about the accounting and accountability practices in diverse healthcare organizations and societies. The Special Issue will focus on the major accounting and accountability challenges which are affecting different healthcare scenarios throughout the globe facing either new reforms, or the effects of the already deployed reforms.

Topics may include, but are not limited to the following:

• The interconnections between cost-accounting, performance management (e.g. Gebreiter and Ferry, 2016) and payment systems (Chapman, Kern and Laguecir, 2014) as triggered by the never-ending search for efficiency vìs-à-vìs the limited amount of public monies;
• Alternative forms of clinical accounting and reporting (e.g., Szczesny and Ernst, 2016) based on new patient-centered accounting information techniques, such as – for example – the Patient-Level Information and Costing System (e.g. Ellwood et al, 2015)Service Line Reporting, costing for the complete cycle of care (Kaplan and Porter, 2011) and the costing for value concept ( Porter, 2010) – as opposed to prior cost-accounting literature focused on DRG/case-mix/standard/reference costing (e.g., Llewellyn and Northcott, 2005);
• Accounting for full-cost pricing (e.g., Ellwood, 1996) that requires novel examination at national and regional levels;
• Accounting and organizational practices both for elderly diseases (e.g., Preston, Chua and Neu, 1997) and for psychiatric illnesses, as well as for disabled persons;
• Accounting accountability challenges for the provision of healthcare in public prisons, and for the ‘poor’;
• Accounting and related hybridisation and legitimisation processes and procedures(e.g. Kurunmäki, 2004; Kurunmäki and Miller, 2006; Llewellyn, 2001);
• The role of accounting and accountability in health care infrastructures and/or facilities that are devoted to disaster relief (e.g., Sargiacomo, 2015) and global pandemics (e.g., Neu, Everett, and Rahaman, 2010), Covid-19 included;
• Organisational resistance strategies to unwanted accounting and finance changes in the aftermath of major reforms (e.g., Broadbent, Jacobs and Laughlin, 2001).

Comparisons between countries (e.g., Jacobs,  2005) or between two or more public hospitals within the same country (e.g., Chua, 1995) are also invited, given the dearth or exisiting research. In a related manner, whilst the Special issue is open to to any theoretical paradigm, the use of alternative theoretical frameworks in comparison with prior seminal research (e.g. Latour by Preston, Cooper and Coombs, 1992; Institutional Theory by Covaleski, Dirsmith and Michelman, 1993;  Foucaultby Preston, Chua and Neu, 1997; Bourdieu by Kurunmäki, 1999) would be also much appreciated.

Authors are invited to contact the Guest Editors should they want to suggest a theme of inquiry or validate whether a research topic falls within the scope of the call for papers.

Submission and deadlines

• All submissions to the Special Issue will be reviewed in accordance with Accounting Forum’s editorial process.
• The submission deadline for this special issue is December31, 2022.
• The special issue is expected to be published in 2024.
• Manuscripts submissions: https://www.editorialmanager.com/racc/Default.aspx.
• Please check the journal’s instructions for authors before submitting.
• The Guest Co-Editors welcome enquiries and declarations of interest in submitting.

References

Abernethy, M.A., Stoelwinder, J. U. (1990). The relationship between organisation structure and management control in hospitals: an elaboration and test of Mintzberg’s professional bureaucracy model. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal 3 (3), 18-33.

Bourn, M. and Ezzamel, M. (1986). Costing and budgeting in the National Health Service”, Financial Accountability and Management, 2(1), 53-71.

Broadbent, J., Jacobs, K., Laughlin, R. (2001). Organisational resistance strategies to unwanted accounting and finance changes: The case of general medical practice in the UK. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 14(5), 565-586.

Chapman, C., Kern, A. and Laguecir, A. (2014). Costing Practices in Healthcare. Accounting Horizons, 28 (2), 353-364.

Chua, W. F. (1995). Experts, networks and inscriptions in the fabrication of accounting images: a story of the representation of three public hospitals. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 20 (2), 111-145.

Covaleski, M. A., Dirsmith, M. W. and Michelman, J. E. (1993), An institutional theory perspective on the DRG framework, case-mix accounting systems and health-care organizations, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 18 (1), pp. 65-80.

Ellwood, S. (1996). Full-cost pricing rules within the National Health Service internal market-accounting choices and the achievement of productive efficiency. Management Accounting Research, 7 (1), 25-51.

Gebreiter, F. and Ferry, L. (2016). Accounting and the ‘Insoluble’ Problem of Health-Care Costs. European Accounting Review, 25 (4), 719-733.

Jacobs, K. (2005). Hybridisation or polarisation:doctors and accounting in UK, Germany and Italy. Financial Accountability and Management, 21 (2), 135-152.

Kaplan, R.S., and Porter, M. E. (2011). The Big Idea: How to solve the cost crisis in health care. Harvard Business Review, 4, 47-64.

Kurunmäki, L. (1999), Professional vs financial capital in the field of health care – Struggles for the redistribution of power and control.  Accounting, Organizations and Society, 24 (2), 95-124.

Kurunmäki, L. (2004). A hybrid profession: the acquisition of management accounting expertise by medical professionals.  Accounting, Organizations and Society, 29 (3-4), 327-347.

Kurunmäki, L., and Miller, P. (2006). Modernising government: the calculating self, hybridisation and performance measurement. Financial Accountability and Management, 22 (1), 87-106.

Llewellyn. S. (2001). Two-way windows’: Clinicians as medical managers. Organization Studies, 22(4), 593-623.

Llewellyn, S. and Northcott, D. (2005), The Average Hospital. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 30 (6), 555-583.

Neu, D., Rahaman, A., Everett, J. (2010). Accounting for Social Purpose Alliances: Confronting the HIV/AIDS Pandemic in Africa. Contemporary Accounting Research, 2, 1093-1129.

Porter, M. E. (2010). What is value in health care. New England Journal of Medicine, 363(26),  2477-2481

Preston, A.M. (1992). The birth of clinical accounting: A study of the emergence and transformations of discourses on costs and practices of accounting in US hospitals. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 17 (1), 63-100.

Preston, A. M., Chua W. F., and Neu, D. (1997). The Diagnosis-Related Group-Prospective Payment System and the problem of the government of rationing health care to the elderly. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 22 (2), 147-164.

Preston, A. M., Cooper, D. J., and Coombs R. W. (1992). Fabricating budgets: A study of the production of management budgeting in the national health service. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 17 (6), 561-593.

Sargiacomo, M. (2015). Earthquakes, Exceptional Government and Extraordinary Accounting. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 42 (3), 67-89.

Szczesny, A., and Ernst, C. (2016). The role of performance reporting system characteristics for the coordination of high-cost areas in hospitals, European Accounting Review, 25 (4),635-660.