Evolution of the Governmental Accounting Reform implementation in Greek Public Hospitals: Testing the institutional framework

Purpose – In an attempt to promote efficiency, effectiveness and economy in health service production, the Greek government imposed in 2003 an accrual basis financial and cost accounting system in all public hospitals of the National Health System (NHS). The purpose of this study is not to investigate thoroughly the accounting reform implementation and adoption in specific organizations, but rather to obtain an overall idea of the reform adoption process in Greek public hospitals by identifying major areas of non-compliance with the mandatory legislative accounting framework and various organisational contingencies that influence the level of reform adoption within a broad institutional framework. Design/methodology/approach – Our analysis is based on the results of an empirical survey that took place during 2009. For the purposes of this survey, a compliance index is constructed and applied on a sample of 94 Greek public hospitals using a structured questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with six public hospital Financial and Accounting executives. Findings – The empirical evidence reveals that the level of accrual basis financial and especially cost accounting adoption in Greek public hospitals is realized only to a limited extent. In particular, results show that the relationship between the institutional isomorphic pressures and accounting reform implementation process is restricted by organizational capability factors (i.e., the quality of existing Information Technology systems, the education level of finance and accounting staff, the extent of reform related training, and the professional support of consultants). Research limitations/implications – Although this study takes into consideration the work of previous researchers in the health care area, it acknowledges that empirical research on the subject in the Greek environment is limited. Therefore this study should be viewed as an initial step to address this limitation. Originality/value – This study draws on the information systems change, management accounting innovation, and public sector reform literatures to contribute to the current knowledge in public sector accounting by examining a number of factors that are expected to influence the implementation and adoption process of accrual and cost accounting practises in the Greek public healthcare sector within a broad institutional framework. Contribution - This study contributes to the international literature of New Public Management (NPM) initiatives in public health sector by providing, to our knowledge, the first large cross-sectional assessment of accrual accounting reform adoption and implementation in Greek public hospitals. Additionally, the empirical evidence of this study can enhance researchers’ and managers’ understanding of major implementation processes and challenges and thus help them refine models of effective implementation process and improve systems and processes on similar future projects.Accrual Accounting, Public Sector Accounting, Compliance Index, Public Hospitals, Isomorphism.

The Effect Of Distributed Earnings And Size Of The Firm To Its Dividend Policy: Some Greek Data

The objective of this paper is to examine the corporate dividend policy for the Greek market. In a series of studies, concerning the Greek market, Vasiliou & Eriotis test and improve, using a panel of data, the classical study of John Lintner who explains the amount dividend paid by firms using the earnings of the firm plus an adjustment according to the dividend paid the year before. This paper is an extension of Vasiliou & Eriotis’ work that test the assumption that firms set their dividend policy not only by the net distributed earnings, but also by the change from the last year’s dividend, the change from the last year’s distributed earnings and the size of the firm. This model is applied on a panel sample of a large number of firms listed on the Athens Stock Exchange for the period 1996 – 2001.  The hypothesis that is tested in this paper is that the dividend at time t depends upon the distributed earnings at time t, the size of the firm and changes in dividend and distributed earnings from the last year (t-1). The empirical results verified the hypothesis that the Greek companies prefer to distribute, each year a rather constant dividend, which they adjust from year to year according to their distributed earnings and size

Assessing Accrual Accounting Reform in Greek Public Hospitals: An Empirical Investigation

During the last decades, several countries worldwide have introduced financial management reforms, as an important part of the New Public Management (NPM) initiative at one or more levels of government sector, by either replacing or transforming their traditional budgetary cash accounting systems towards a business-like accrual accounting concept. Following the example of this upcoming managerial trend, the Greek government introduced in 2003 the accrual basis accounting into public hospitals, as the hospital sector is one of the areas where NPM reforms have been introduced in search of higher efficiency, effectiveness and economy in service production. The purpose of this paper is twofold. The first goal is to provide an overview of the government sector reform initiatives in Greece and to present empirical evidence regarding the adoption level of the accrual basis accounting standards in the Greek public Health sector. The second goal of the research is to investigate the impact of a range of potentially contingent factors on hospitals compliance with the accrual financial and cost accounting reform. The present analysis is based on the results of an empirical survey that took place during 2009. For the purposes of this survey, a structured questionnaire was prepared and sent to the Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) of 132 Greek public hospitals. In particular, a linear regression model analysis was used to examine the cross-sectional differences on a number of explanatory and implementation factors of the accounting reform adoption level. The empirical evidence reveals that the level of accrual and especially cost accounting adoption in Greek public hospitals is realized only to a limited extent. In particular, results show that the level of reform adoption is positively related to IT quality, reform related training, education level of accounting staff, and professional consultants’ support. However, no significant relationship was found between the level of reform adoption and hospital size, reform implementation cost, CEO educational background, experience effect, and absence of management-physicians conflict relationship. The main contribution of this study is the empirical evidence it provides on the approaches and processes used by the Government of Greece to implement accrual financial and cost accounting systems in the Greek National Health System (GNHS) and the role certain human, organizational and situational factors played in such implementations for enhancing researchers’ and managers’ understanding of major implementation processes and challenges as well as helping them refine models of effective implementation process and improve systems and processes on similar future projectsAccrual Accounting, Public Sector Accounting, Compliance, Public Hospitals, contingency factors

Dividend Policy: An Empirical Analysis Of The Greek Market

This paper explores the corporate dividend policy in the Greek market. Assuming that managers are reluctant to make dividend changes that might have to be reversed, we test the hypothesis that corporate dividends are associated with past dividends, as well as the performance and the effective management of the firms. The net income available to stockholders and the sales are employed as dummy variables that capture the performance and the effective management of the sampling firms respectively. The estimations have been performed using panel data procedure for a sample of 149 Greek companies listed in the Athens Stock Exchange during 1996 2001. The empirical results support the hypothesis that companies distribute a dividend according to their performance their effective management and are not willing to change their dividend policy frequently

The asymmetric timeliness in the reporting of good and bad news of firms that trade in the Athens stock exchange

Evidence on the asymmetric timeliness in the reporting of good and bad news follows the argument that accountants tend to use discretionary accruals to over-recognise bad news in order to be conservative. The Greek reporting framework, before the adoption of International Accounting Standards, did not allow or offer opportunities for discretionary use of accruals for either recording good and/or bad news. Empirical evidence based on data from firms that trade in the Athens Stock Exchange, for the period 1993- 2002, show that differences in the timeliness in the recognition of good news and bad news exist. However, in contrast to studies that use UK data and US data bad news are not recorded conservatively.peer-reviewe

Testing technical anomalies in Athens stock exchange (ASE)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the existence of historical Market anomalies in the Athens Stock Market (ASE). The market anomalies that are going to be explored are technical ones concerning the trading rules of the various types of moving averages. The above anomalies were observed in most developed and developing markets. This study will investigate these effects for the most important index of the Athens market, the Athens General Index. The data used are for the period from 1/1/1990 to 31/12/2004. Overall, our results confirm the existence of technical anomalies in ASE and provide strong support for profitability of those technical trading rules.peer-reviewe

Profit Margin And Capital Structure: An Empirical Relationship

This study constitutes an attempt to investigate the relationship between debt-to equity ratio and firm’s profitability, taking into consideration the level of firms’ investment and the degree of market power.  The study uses panel data for various industries, covering the period 1995-96.  The main conclusions of our study are: a) firms which prefer to finance their investment activities through self-finance are more profitable than firms which finance investment through borrowed capital; b) firms prefer competing with each other than cooperating; c) firms use their investment in fixed assets as a strategic variable to affect profitability

Recent Developments and Trends in Accounting Information Systems

This study examines the relationship between management accounting and integrated information systems by investigating the existing literature on the subject. The current research has been uncovered, classified and interpreted in order to provide an understandable illustration of the findings of previous studies and to show in what aspects more research is required. This paper also provides a new theoretical framework which enables a structured classification of the reviewed literature

Productivity, Product Differentiation And Profitability In The Greek Chemical Industry: An Empirical Analysis, 1991 And 2001

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the profitability of the firm and its R&D expenditures. We separate R&D expenditures in two main categories, R&D that focuses on the product differentiation and R&D that concerns improvements in production process. The latter leads to more efficient production, which can be measured by labour productivity. We estimate our model using cross section analysis and test the significance of each one of rhe R&D expenditures in firms profitability. Our model was applied to the Greek chemical industry, for a data set of 124 enterprises, in two distinct years, 1991 and 2001. Our findings support that the role of productivity is growing within time

Evolution of the Governmental Accounting Reform implementation in Greek Public Hospitals: Testing the institutional framework

Purpose – In an attempt to promote efficiency, effectiveness and economy in health service production, the Greek government imposed in 2003 an accrual basis financial and cost accounting system in all public hospitals of the National Health System (NHS). The purpose of this study is not to investigate thoroughly the accounting reform implementation and adoption in specific organizations, but rather to obtain an overall idea of the reform adoption process in Greek public hospitals by identifying major areas of non-compliance with the mandatory legislative accounting framework and various organisational contingencies that influence the level of reform adoption within a broad institutional framework. Design/methodology/approach – Our analysis is based on the results of an empirical survey that took place during 2009. For the purposes of this survey, a compliance index is constructed and applied on a sample of 94 Greek public hospitals using a structured questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with six public hospital Financial and Accounting executives. Findings – The empirical evidence reveals that the level of accrual basis financial and especially cost accounting adoption in Greek public hospitals is realized only to a limited extent. In particular, results show that the relationship between the institutional isomorphic pressures and accounting reform implementation process is restricted by organizational capability factors (i.e., the quality of existing Information Technology systems, the education level of finance and accounting staff, the extent of reform related training, and the professional support of consultants). Research limitations/implications – Although this study takes into consideration the work of previous researchers in the health care area, it acknowledges that empirical research on the subject in the Greek environment is limited. Therefore this study should be viewed as an initial step to address this limitation. Originality/value – This study draws on the information systems change, management accounting innovation, and public sector reform literatures to contribute to the current knowledge in public sector accounting by examining a number of factors that are expected to influence the implementation and adoption process of accrual and cost accounting practises in the Greek public healthcare sector within a broad institutional framework. Contribution - This study contributes to the international literature of New Public Management (NPM) initiatives in public health sector by providing, to our knowledge, the first large cross-sectional assessment of accrual accounting reform adoption and implementation in Greek public hospitals. Additionally, the empirical evidence of this study can enhance researchers’ and managers’ understanding of major implementation processes and challenges and thus help them refine models of effective implementation process and improve systems and processes on similar future projects