Zoom link: https://aarhusuniversity.zoom.us/j/66230126171

On Friday 30 October 2020 at 10:00 via Zoom, Margit Malmmose and Mai Skjøtt Linneberg will give a seminar entitled   

Do hospitals do better? Performance discourses embedded in accounting narratives in annual reports

Abstract
Accounting technologies have been emphasized as having substantial influence on the New Public Management (NPM) agenda. These accounting technologies have developed from a focus on budget, costing and productivity increasingly to include other broader aspects of performance. Within health care, a rising managerial focus supplementing costs is that of quality in various forms with an increased focus on stakeholders, such as patients. Through a longitudinal study of annual reports from 2007-2018, this paper analyses NPM themes represented in hospital reporting. We focus on the evolving financial performance highlights and non-financial performance areas as well as which stakeholders are represented. We include the annual reports from two of the five administrative Regions of Denmark, which monitor and represent public health care. The developing rhetoric in the statements is analysed through a critical discourse analysis (CDA). The study finds an increasing disclosure of non-financial performance throughout the time-period. The more recent emerging themes are quality in health, patient centeredness and cooperation across organisations, clearly reflecting the political agenda of the government. Additionally, differences between regional reporting are clearly present. 

Keywords: Longitudinal, non-financial performance, public health, critical discourse analysis