Good governance practices and information disclosure in portuguese public enterprise entity hospitals

Dissertação de mestrado em Accounting ; Health rendering entities are fundamental in every country and encompass an important share of every state’s economy. The theoretical revolution propitiated by New Public Management and Public Governance studies has led governments to act in order to endow public owned entities of mechanisms of accountability through mandatory information disclosure, among others. In Portugal, keeping with international trends, the movement towards better governance followed a path of institutional pressure originated in legal provisions stating mandatory abidance. Through the last 30 years successive Portuguese governments have implemented changes in State-owned entities in general and in public enterprise entity hospitals in particular, aiming at pursuing the best practices regarding good governance. This study leads us through the evolution in New Public Management and Public Governance in order to frame the Portuguese adoption of good governance principles in State-owned entities. It lays down the different legislation issued by Portuguese governments regarding health rendering services and their governance practices. Through multiple case studies, ten hospitals’ annual reports were analysed regarding principles of good governance disclosure, in a timeline of six years (2006-2011), it aims at understanding the drivers of change in information disclosure behaviours in the National Health Services under the light of institutional theory combined with Oliver’s model (1991) of strategic responses to institutional pressures. The study demonstrates that the adoption of the disclosure requirements was progressive and that most of the entities seem to have adopted an avoidance strategy, pretending compliance with the legal requirements in the light of Oliver’s model instead of a full compliance. The strategic response adopted allows concluding that entities appear to be more concerned with apparently fulfilling legal demands than with actually meeting them in what can be described as a ...