Search results

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.

The authors conducted three rounds of interviews, ethnographic observations of meetings and document analyses in five German hospitals between February and August 2020.

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.

The authors offer suggestions about scenario planning and interorganizational learning which have implications for healthcare practitioners.

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.

This study sets out to shed light on those infrastructures underlying the ubiquitous, yet contested nature of governing by numbers. Investigating the 30-year long emergence of Germany’s “external quality assurance system” for hospitals, the authors show how methods for quantifying quality align with broader institutional and ideational shifts to form a calculative infrastructure for governance. Our study focuses on three phases of infrastructural development wherein methods for calculating quality, institutions for coordinating data and reform ideals converge with one another. The authors argue that the succession of these phases represents a gradual layering process, whereby old ways of enacting quality governance are not replaced, but augmented by new sets of calculative practices, institutions and ideas. Thinking about infrastructures as multi-layered complexes allows us to explore how they construct possibilities for control, remain stable over time and transform the fields in which they are embedded. Rather than governance being enacted according to a singular goal or value, we see an infrastructure that is flexible enough to support multiple modalities of control, including selective intervention, quality-based competition and automatized budgeting. Infrastructural change, instead of revolving around crises in measurement, is shaped by incubation periods – times of relative calm when political actors, medical practitioners, mathematicians, and many others explore and reflect past experiences, rather than follow erratic reforms fads. Finally, analysing infrastructures as multi-layered constructs underlines how they produce multiple images of care quality, which not only shift existing power relations, but also change the ways we understand and make sense of public services.

This paper introduces the second part of a AAAJ special issue on accounting, accountability and management during the COVID-19 emergency. The authors analyse the themes that emerge from the second part of the special issue, which allows us to identify the diverse accounting and accountability practices across different geographical and organisational contexts. The authors also provide an overall picture of the contributions of the special issue, with insights into avenues of future research.

Building on the first part of the AAAJ special issue, the paper draws together and identifies additional emerging themes related to research into the COVID-19 pandemic and how it impacts accounting, accountability and management practices. The authors reflect on the contributions of the special issue to the interdisciplinary accounting research project.

The authors identify two macro-themes and outline their contributions to the accounting literature. The first deals with the changes and dangers of accounting and accountability practices during the pandemic. The second considers accountability practices in a broader sense, including reporting, disclosure and rhetorical practices in the management of COVID-19.

The paper shows the pervasive role of accounting and accountability in the unprecedented and indiscriminate health crisis of COVID-19. It highlights the important role of special issues in producing timely research that responds to unfolding events.

This paper contributes to current debates on the roles of accounting and accountability during COVID-19 by drawing together the themes of the special issue and identifying future interdisciplinary accounting research on the pandemic's aftermath.

This paper studies the interactive valuation discourses of an online user community (transfermarkt.de) that seeks to determine market values for soccer players. Despite their seemingly casual nature, these values have featured in newspapers, transfer negotiations, academic research, and capital market communication – and have thus become reified.

The paper employs netnographic research methodology to collect and thematically analyze a wide range of user entries on the platform. These entries are studied using theoretical insights from the sociology of quantification and valuation.

The analysis reveals how values are constructed in constant interaction between value-proposing users and value-justifying “experts.” This dynamic form of relational valuation positions players relative to one another as well as to actual transactions on the transfer market. In the absence of authoritative guidelines, it is this possibility and affordance for interaction that enacts a coherent valuation regime. The paper further reveals the platform's response to a disruptive event, which risked bringing the user-expert dynamics to a halt, requiring intervention from the platform to repair its valuation frame.

The paper responds to increased scholarly interests in the valuation of professional athletes. It contributes to the extant literature on valuation, first, by analyzing the dynamic valuation work that feeds into the social construction of values and, second, by studying platform participation and user interaction in a socially engineered online space.

Resurgent interest in the life and work of the Italian Cambridge economist Piero Sraffa is leading to New Directions in Sraffa Scholarship. This chapter introduces readers to some of these developments. First and perhaps foremost is the fact that as of September 2016 Sraffa’s archival material has been uploaded onto the website of the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University, as digital colour images; this chapter introduces readers to the history of these events. This history provides sharp relief on the extant debates over the role of the archival material in leading to the final publication of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, and readers are provided a brief sketch of these matters. The varied nature of Sraffa scholarship is demonstrated by the different aspects of Sraffa’s intellectual legacy which are developed and discussed in the various entries of our Symposium. The conclusion is reached that we are on the cusp of an exciting phase change of tremendous potential in Sraffa scholarship.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight into xylophagia, its treatment, intervention options, etiological causes and possible relationship with other diseases.

A systematic search was performed across four scientific databases (i.e. Ovid Medline, Embase via Ovid, PubMed and ProQuest). All of the qualitative studies reporting on xylophagia from the inception of databases until August 2019 have been included. The quality of included studies was assessed through a ten-item checklist given by Kmet et al. (2004).

A total of 18 studies were included, and five primary themes emerged after analysis: precipitation/onset of xylophagia, co-morbid psychiatric or medical illnesses, assessment and investigation modes to confirm diagnosis, outcomes of xylophagia and treatment options comprising medical care, psychological care, counseling and duration of recovery. There were 16 females and 9 males in included studies. The mean ages and standard deviations of males and females were 29.25(12.17) years and 32.81(11.92), respectively. The mean duration and standard deviation of paper pica were 4.80(4.27) years.

Despite the limitation that this meta-synthesis is based upon findings from case studies, results show that standardized medication regimens for treating xylophagia are still not available or are unknown. There is a dire need for further research in order to better understand the disorder. The healthcare professionals need to use reciprocal, mutually constituent influence of biological and sociocultural factors in order to screen, diagnose and manage complex psychological problems like xylophagia.

The findings advance our understanding of the positive effects of patients and family members undergoing counseling or cognitive behavior therapy in reducing stress and enhancing coping skills thus, avoiding self-damaging behaviors.