This paper sheds further light on the role of quantification in corporate environmental disclosures. Quantification is an inherently social practice, which has attracted a fair amount of academic interest in recent years. At the same time, in the field of social and environmental accounting there is a paucity of research on quantification or the role it plays for organisations, for organisational communication and in societies more broadly. Accordingly, in this paper, we will draw on a qualitative case study to discuss the potential implications that might arise from the use of quantified information in corporate environmental disclosures. Our case study illustrates the diverse effects of quantification suggested in the prior literature by placing them in the context of corporate environmental disclosures. We discuss how quantification implies fake precisionism and promotes commensuration of incomparables, thereby limiting the discussion to themes and questions preferred by company management. We maintain that quantification, while appearing to produce neutral and value-free information, has a substantive ethical dimension through how it implicates accountability relationships as well as the respective power relations between diverse stakeholders in societies.
This study investigates how institutional logics that are prevalent in an organizational field influence change in management accounting. More precisely, we examine the institutional logics of late DRG adopters through which organizations attempt to address the pressures imposed by the institutional field of health care. Specific attention is also paid to the way in which organizations operate at different institutional levels and what kinds of interrelationships exist between these levels. Such developments may at least partially explain why the implementation and adoption of DRG–based accounting systems in Finnish health care took almost twenty years.
This study aims to answer how rational task allocation between the nursing staff and the support service provider in the healthcare context can increase the positive outcome of the work system. The work system model is used as a theoretical framework, with resilience and cost as complementary concepts. This qualitative case study used action research and participatory design to develop the work system with the interplay of two parallel personnel groups in the healthcare environment. First, the case of an ongoing relationship between the target organization's nursing staff and in‐house logistics and material supply services was studied. The development process resulted in a variety of practical ideas to improve the cooperation between the personnel groups. In the second case, a prospective relationship between the nursing staff and an external logistics service provider was examined. This research's conceptual results identify the main characteristics of rational support services as comprehensive, resilient, reliable, and easily accessible.
We are grateful for the comments provided in those sessions by the participants and by our discussants Charles H. Cho (CSAFC), Paulina Arroyo (ENROAC) and Jan Bebbington (EAA), as well as for the insightful comments of the two anonymous reviewers. Moreover, we wish to acknowledge financial support received for this study from the Academy of Finland (project 250478) and the Finnish Foundation for Economic Education. The usual caveat applies.
Purpose – This paper aims to discuss the implementation process for the new diagnosis-related groups (DRG) accounting system in the health-care sector, and the struggle to gain acceptance for the system. The emphasis is on the goals and the expected results of the system, and how the system finally becomes an actuality. Design/methodology/approach – The paper illustrates the framing of an accounting system, that is, how the health organization constructs the goals and the purposes of the system during its implementation. The empirical data consist of interviews, newspaper articles and notes from participatory observations. Findings – The goals and the purposes of the new system were not defined ex ante, but rather emerged as supporters of the system found a common language. This commonality enabled the linking of the interests of the hospital managers with the DRG system. At this point, the actual DRG-based systems for the product categorization and the full-cost pricing system became heterogeneous. Making the system visible through discussion entailed seeing the invisible. Seeing the invisible allowed the system to become a reality (national comparability). Visibility helped the DRG system to gain approval and become a stronger system. Research limitations/implications – This study is an illustration of a unique social process. The study’s applicability under other circumstances should be considered with caution. Originality/value – The paper illustrates how the purpose of an accounting system emerges and is constructed through the interaction between various actors.
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