Updating Accounting Systems: Longitudinal Evidence from the Healthcare Sector

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Labro, Eva; Stice-Lawrence, Lorien
• 署名单位: University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; University of North Carolina School of Medicine; University of Southern California
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2019.3421
• 发表日期: 2020
• 关键词: management accounting; accounting system updating; healthcare costs; Sarbanes-Oxley Act Section 404; Economic determinants; mimicry; coercion

摘要

This paper provides evidence on the determinants and economic outcomes of updates of accounting systems (AS) over a 24-year timespan in a large sample of U.S. hospitals. We provide evidence that hospitals update their AS in response to three types of pressures: economic pressures, such as increases in the quality of accounting information driven by vendor rollouts of improved AS; coercive pressures imposed by regulators mandating certain practices, such as internal control practices imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404; and mimetic pressures for hospitals to conform their AS to those of their peers, such as local county and prominent celebrity peers. We find that only economically driven updates lead to economic benefits in the form of lower operating expenses and higher revenues. In contrast, we find some evidence that AS updates prompted by coercive regulatory pressures actually impose economic costs in the form of higher operating expenses.