Organizing care during the COVID-19 pandemic: the role of accounting in German hospitals
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
ISSN: 0951-3574
Article publication date: 30 March 2021
Issue publication date: 23 July 2021
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to provide insight into the roles of accounting in the management of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in five German hospitals.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted three rounds of interviews, ethnographic observations of meetings and document analyses in five German hospitals between February and August 2020.
Findings
The authors found that actors repeatedly used a central set of indicators (the number of beds for COVID-19 patients) when adapting a healthcare infrastructure to the pandemic. Accounting figures allowed actors to problematize prior configurations, organize processes to make uncertainty plannable and virtualize changes to resume treating non-COVID-19 patients.
Practical implications
The authors offer suggestions about scenario planning and interorganizational learning which have implications for healthcare practitioners.
Originality/value
The authors contribute to the accounting in crisis literature by adding an organization-focused study. Adding nuance to key themes in the literature, they show how the organizations and the field level interact and how organizing locally preceded economizing. They also offer a nonbinary answer to the question of whether or not changes revert back to “normal” after a crisis event.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the journal’s two anonymous reviewers, Jan Mouritsen and the participants of the New Directions in Management Accounting Conference 2020 for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
Citation
Huber, C., Gerhardt, N. and Reilley, J.T. (2021), "Organizing care during the COVID-19 pandemic: the role of accounting in German hospitals", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 34 No. 6, pp. 1445-1456. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-08-2020-4882
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited