Employee reactions to the use of management control systems in hospitals: motivation vs. threat

Environmental management accounting and innovation in water and energy reduction

The objective of the study is to analyse the role of environmental management accounting (EMA) and the innovation of products and processes in reducing energy and water consumption. To carry out the study, data from PINTEC2017 on innovation activities from 55 sectors in Brazil from 2015 to 2017 were analysed. The hypotheses were tested with the application of structural equation modelling using SmartPLS. The results show that environmental management accounting (EMA) affects product innovation directly and process innovation indirectly through environmental management techniques. These results show that the use of EMA techniques contributes differently to each stage of innovation (processes and products). Thus, industries with new and improved products for the national market innovate their processes with the use of new technologies, training and innovation activities. These results are most evident in the sectors of paper and cellulose, petroleum products, chemicals and the manufacturing of machinery for extraction and construction. These results show that environmental management techniques interact with process innovation, mainly in industries that promote product innovation, and that process innovation has led to a reduction in water and energy consumption.

Modelling management response and online reviews for improved financial performance of hospitals

Hospitals are increasingly changing their online review strategy from active listening to proactive engagement to ensure proper responses to patients. Reviews of and responses from hospitals vary in different regions of the world, thereby the process of ranking of hospitals is bounded to a specific region. On the other hand, working conditions in public hospitals have been of great concern worldwide for healthcare personnel. Due to the poor review of a hospital, financial performance is gradually deteriorating, which leads to the migration of healthcare personnel from one hospital to another. This study investigates the combined effect of management responses and online reviews on the financial performance of hospitals by concentrating on three areas of concern. First, how variation in management responses, both within a hospital and on peer review sites, affects the motivation of healthcare personnel towards service and number of patients seeking services. Second, a cyclic link depicting interrelationships among four major domains, namely rating, management response, financial performance, and recommendation, has been presented. Third, a generic model is proposed to improve the performance of hospitals in each of the above domains, and analysis has been done to make the model region-specific. A case study on Indian hospitals is performed to depict the sufficiency of models. It is found that management intervention on social media should be strategic, and a higher average rating tends to mitigate the effect of negative responses.

Management Control Systems and Clinical Experience of Managers in Public Hospitals

Healthcare authorities are encouraging managers in hospitals to acquire clinical experience and knowledge in order to better carry out and coordinate healthcare service delivery. The main objective of this paper is to analyse how the clinical experience of hospital managers is related to public health institutions’ performance. It is proposed that the effect of the clinical experience on operative and financial organizational performance is indirect through the mediating variables of perceived utility of management information and horizontal management control system. This paper analyses how these variables impact hospital performance through the data from a survey sent to 364 hospital managers in Brazil. The results show that managers’ clinical experience is related to higher perceived utility of historical, financial, short-term, and internal information, but not with horizontal control adoption in hospitals. Furthermore, our results show that, in hospitals, perceived utility of forecasted, non-financial, long-term, and external managerial information positively affects hospitals’ financial performance, while adoption of horizontal control management positively affects operational performance. Through showing evidence that clinical background could explain the differences not only in hospital service management but also in information capabilities and management control processes, this study offer meaningful implications for healthcare authorities and hospital managers involved in the development and implementation of strategies in the health sector.