EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Developing enabling cost information during the COVID-19 crisis

Julia M. Heberle, David S. Bedford, Christopher S. Chapman and Prabhu Sivabalan

Accounting Forum, 2025, vol. 49, issue 3, 697-723

Abstract: In this paper, we build upon the crisis literature and theorisation of enabling design principles to examine how cost information was calculated and used in response to the COVID-19 crisis in public hospitals in New South Wales (NSW) Australia. This study analyses how various actors sought to respond to demands for cost information that was immediate, intense, and dynamic as the pandemic unfolded. In response, we observed two costing processes emerging. One focussed on the immediate pandemic funding requirements whilst the second addressed future activity-based funding requirements. The crisis created a situation in which matters present in business-as-usual costing practice became more visible. The four enabling design principles help us to theorise the complex interactions between how cost information might be constructed differently to relate to different purposes relating to both internal and global transparency.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01559982.2024.2326954 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:accfor:v:49:y:2025:i:3:p:697-723

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/racc20

DOI: 10.1080/01559982.2024.2326954

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting Forum is currently edited by Carol Tilt

More articles in Accounting Forum from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().

 
Page updated 2025-07-02
Handle: RePEc:taf:accfor:v:49:y:2025:i:3:p:697-723