Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Machines and manoeuvres: Responsibility accounting and the construction of hospital information systems
AU - Bloomfield, Brian
AU - Coombs, Rod
AU - Cooper, David J
AU - Rea, David
PY - 1992/10
Y1 - 1992/10
N2 - This paper analyses an episode in the development of management information systems in NHS hospitals in the UK. These systems (called Resource Management Systems) are designed to reveal the costs of medical activity, and thus open up new scope for management of that activity. The paper accepts that notions such as “responsibility accounting” and the “constitutive role of accounting systems” can substantially help in the analysis of how such systems are used. However, it argues that such approaches are less successful in revealing how such systems come to be created. To address this problem, the “actor-network” approach of Callon and Latour is employed in the analysis of fieldwork data collected by the authors in three health authorities over a three-year period. The analysis reveals considerable interpretative flexibility surrounding the understandings of the nature and purpose of resource management, and of the technologies that might be used to implement it. This diversity, the paper argues, cannot be adequately explained without recourse to a framework such as that contained in the actor-network approach.
AB - This paper analyses an episode in the development of management information systems in NHS hospitals in the UK. These systems (called Resource Management Systems) are designed to reveal the costs of medical activity, and thus open up new scope for management of that activity. The paper accepts that notions such as “responsibility accounting” and the “constitutive role of accounting systems” can substantially help in the analysis of how such systems are used. However, it argues that such approaches are less successful in revealing how such systems come to be created. To address this problem, the “actor-network” approach of Callon and Latour is employed in the analysis of fieldwork data collected by the authors in three health authorities over a three-year period. The analysis reveals considerable interpretative flexibility surrounding the understandings of the nature and purpose of resource management, and of the technologies that might be used to implement it. This diversity, the paper argues, cannot be adequately explained without recourse to a framework such as that contained in the actor-network approach.
KW - Actor-network
KW - Hospital information systems
KW - Resource management
U2 - 10.1016/0959-8022(92)90009-H
DO - 10.1016/0959-8022(92)90009-H
M3 - Journal article
VL - 2
SP - 197
EP - 219
JO - Accounting, Management and Information Technologies
JF - Accounting, Management and Information Technologies
SN - 0959-8022
IS - 4
ER -