DISCUSSION
In this study we have focused on hospitals as organisations that are dominated
by professional norms and values in the production of health care services.
We have discussed what kind of logics guide clinical managers’ perceptions of
their management control practices when using accounting information. This
discussion is also held against the background of different kinds of accountability.
We found that these managers managed along a continuum of logic deriving
from instrumental/enterprise logic, and progressing via professional logic to
more political logic. They balance the instrumental rationality expressed in the
hospital’s management control as accounting information with the professional
norms developed on an individual basis. The managers express values based on
the shared medical practices, and they also balance these forms of logic against
external political expectations and expectations from stakeholders which are
expressed in the steering documents from the ministry.