Leite, Joaquim2024-11-152024-11-152024Leite, Joaquim (2024). Information systems change and public-private partnerships governance: accelerators factors for discontinuing loosely coupled hospital management accounting practices. In International Journal of Business Information Systems.http://hdl.handle.net/10198/30613This study aims to explain how loosely coupled management accounting practices (MAPs) in public hospitals change and why. An embedded multiple case study method was used, involving three cases of public-private partnerships (PPP) governance in Portuguese public hospitals across several units of analysis. Data collection was done in documents and through five in-depth interviews. Data were interpreted following a qualitative methodology. The results showed inertia pressures in Portuguese public hospitals, constrained by centralised public management accounting, with loosely coupled MAPs persisting with little or no instrumental utility. In turn, the PPP governance context allowed public hospitals to switch to new information systems that quickly discontinued MAPs immersed in the phenomenon of loose coupling. Particularising the case of PPP governance in healthcare, this research reinforces the theory that the change in the governance model (organisational change) and information systems is the key external factor of change in accounting.engPublic-private partnerships governance (PPP)Information systems changeLoose couplingDiscontinuity of management accounting practicesPortuguese public hospitalsother10.1504/IJBIS.2023.10055190