Purpose – The pupose of this paper is to present an overview of the main conceptual and methodological issues that underlie our current understanding of benchmarking initiatives in the field of health. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a pragmatic review of the literature...

Purpose – To review the application of the principles of benchmarking to the field of laboratory medicine. Design/methodology/approach – Review of the literature on performance management techniques employed in healthcare provision, and specifically in laboratory medicine, including...

Purpose – Public sector organisations have to respond to calls for accountability from both funders and recipients of the services, as well as report on operations within constrained financial resources. Given the absence of profit motives and the difficulties of performance assessment in...

The way budgets are used may reflect the requirements of particular institutional and organisational contexts, rather than a ubiquitous need to plan and control technical operations. This paper examines the budgetary processes in a particular institutional and organisational setting‐ that of a...

The resurgence of interest in public sector accounting has been evident in the significant growth of the literature concerning both developed and developing countries. Literature reviews in the area, however, have only focused on the former thus leaving a gap which has been overlooked for some...

The motivation for this paper is to better understand the strengths and limitations of quantitative performance measures in a changing environment. The context is one of organisational change and innovative management. Using a case study approach, the paper presents a history of organisational...