Mapping the field: A bibliometric analysis of accountability literature in healthcare

Titolo Rivista MECOSAN
Autori/Curatori Marianna Mauro, Monica Giancotti, Giovanna Talarico
Anno di pubblicazione 2017 Fascicolo 2017/101 Lingua Inglese
Numero pagine 24 P. 7-30 Dimensione file 23831 KB
DOI 10.3280/MESA2017-101002
Il DOI è il codice a barre della proprietà intellettuale: per saperne di più clicca qui

Qui sotto puoi vedere in anteprima la prima pagina di questo articolo.

Se questo articolo ti interessa, lo puoi acquistare (e scaricare in formato pdf) seguendo le facili indicazioni per acquistare il download credit. Acquista Download Credits per scaricare questo Articolo in formato PDF

Anteprima articolo

FrancoAngeli è membro della Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA)associazione indipendente e non profit per facilitare (attraverso i servizi tecnologici implementati da CrossRef.org) l’accesso degli studiosi ai contenuti digitali nelle pubblicazioni professionali e scientifiche

This paper’s objective is to illustrate the state of art of the research on accountability in healthcare for obtaining an overall view of a field’s intellectual structure. The high complexity of the healthcare system and the consequence of the New Public Management (NPM) and Post NPM reforms have contributed to the need for effective accountability by healthcare providers. A bibliometric review "through a co-word analysis" of research published in scientific journals and indexed in the SSCI (Social Science Citation Index) database over a period of 23 years (1990-2013) is been performed. To better understanding the conceptual structure of the research field a Hierarchical Cluster Analysis is been conducted: it allowed identifying prevailing areas in the research field. Literature paid great attention to the proposal and analysis of instruments for improving accountability and to the description of laws and regulations. Several topics have been poorly explored: a) the identification of obstacles that hinder the healthcare organisations’ ability to be accountable; b) the effectiveness of Instruments through which healthcare organisations respond to the demand for accountability; c) healthcare organisations’ strategies for responding to the pressure generated by regulations. The added value is the elaboration of a keywords map, which is a useful tool to understand the intellectual structure of the field, identifying the issues that have been more explored, or those that remain relatively unstudied, on which scholars should focus their future efforts.

Keywords:Accountability, Health, Bibliometric review, Co-word analysis.

  1. Ahrens T. (1996). Styles of accountability. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 21: 139-173.
  2. Aldenderfer M.S., Blashfield R.K. (1984). Cluster Analysis. Newbury Park (CA): Sage.
  3. Amici M., Meneguzzo M., Matei L., Mititelu C. (2011). Evaluation and transparency in PA modernization: monitoring the main mechanisms in Italy and Romania. In: Matei A., Radulescu C. (eds). National and European values of public administration in the Balkans. Bucharest: Economica Publishing House, 123-131.
  4. Aucoin P. (1990). Administrative reform in public management: paradigms, principles, paradoxes and pendulums. Governance, 3: 115-137.
  5. Bakker R.M. (2010). Taking Stock of Temporary Organizational Forms: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews, 12: 466-486.
  6. Balabanova D., McKee M. (2002). Understanding informal payments for health care: the example of Bulgaria. Health Policy, 62: 243-273.
  7. Bauin S., Michelet B., Schweighoffer M.G., Vermeulin P. (1991). Using bibliometrics in strategic analysis understanding chemical reactions at the CNRS. Scientometrics, 22:113-137.
  8. Baumgartner H., Pieters R. (2003). The structural influence of marketing journals: A citation analysis of the discipline and its subareas over time. Journal of Marketing, 67: 123-139.
  9. Bebbington J., Unerman J., O’Dwyer B. (eds) (2014). Sustainability Accounting and Accountability. Routledge.
  10. Behn R.D. (2001). Rethinking Democratic Accountability. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press.
  11. Benzécri J.P. (1982). Histoire et préhistoire de l’analyse des données. Dunod: Paris. Berg M., Meijerink Y., Gras M., Goossensen A.,
  12. Schellekens W., Haeck J., Kingma H. (2005). Feasibility first: developing public performance indicators on patient safety and clinical effectiveness for Dutch hospitals. Health Policy, 75: 59-73.
  13. Bovens M. (2005). Public accountability. In: Ferlie E., Lynn L.E., Pollitt C. (eds). The oxford handbook of public management. New York: Oxford University Press, 182-208.
  14. Bovens M. (2010). Two Concepts of Accountability: Accountability as a Virtue and as a Mechanism. West European Politics, 33: 946-967.
  15. Braam R.R. (1991). Mapping of Science: Foci of Intellectual Interest in Scientific Literature. Leiden: DSWO Press.
  16. Bratchell N. (1989). Cluster analysis. Chemometrics and intelligent laboratory systems, 6: 105-125.
  17. Brinkerhoff D. (2003). Accountability and Health Systems: Overview, Framework, and Strategies. The patterns for health reforms plus project. Bethesda MD: Abt Associates.
  18. Callon M., Courtial J.P., Turner W.A., Bauin S. (1983). From translations to problematic networks: An introduction to co-word analysis. Social science information, 22: 191-235.
  19. Callon M., Law J., Rip A. (eds) (1986). Mapping the dynamics of science and technology. UK: Palgrave McMillan.
  20. Caminiti C., Meschi T., Braglia L., Diodati F., Iezzi E., Marcomini B., Borghi L. (2013). Reducing unnecessary hospital days to improve quality of care through physician accountability: a cluster randomised trial. BMC health services research, 13.
  21. Charvet F.F., Cooper M.C., Gardner J.T. (2008). The Intellectual Structure of Supply Chain Management: a Bibliometric Approach. Journal of Business Logistics, 29: 47-73.
  22. Courtial J.P. (1994). A Coword analysis of scientometrics. Scientometrics, 31: 251-260.
  23. Culnan M.J. (1986). The intellectual development of management information systems, 1972-1982: A co-citation analysis. Management Science, 32: 156-172.
  24. De Bellis N. (2009). Bibliometrics and citation analysis: from the science citation index to cybermetrics. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press.
  25. DeVore S., Champion R.W. (2011). Driving population health through accountable care organizations. Health Affairs, 30: 41-50.
  26. Dobers P., Strannegard L., Wolff R. (2000). Unionjacking the research agenda. A study of the frontstage and backstage of Business Strategy and the Environment 1992-1998. Business Strategy and the Environment, 9: 49-61.
  27. Downs G.M., Barnard J.M. (2002). Clustering methods and their uses in computational chemistry. Reviews in computational chemistry, 18: 1-40.
  28. Dunsire A. (1995), Administrative theory in the 1980s: a viewpoint. Public Administration, 73: 17-40.
  29. Eakin H., Eriksen S., Eikeland P.O., Øyen C. (2011). Public sector reform and governance for adaptation: implications of new public management for adaptive capacity in Mexico and Norway. Environmental management, 47: 338-351.
  30. Eisenhardt K.M. (1989). Agency theory. An assessment and review. Academy of Management Review, 14: 57-74.
  31. Feldman H.J., Walker J., Li J., Delbanco T. (2013), OpenNotes: Hospitalists’ Challenge and Opportunity. Journal of Hospital Medicine, 8: 414-417.
  32. Fernandez-Alles M., Ramos-Rodríguez A. (2009). Intellectual structure of human resources management research: A bibliometric analysis of the Journal of Human Resource Management, 1985-2005. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60: 161-175.
  33. Fetscherin M., Voss H., Gugler P. (2010). 30 Years of foreign direct investment to China: An interdisciplinary literature review. International Business Review, 19: 235-246.
  34. Finer H. (1941). Administrative responsibility in democratic government. Public administration review, 1: 335-350.
  35. Friedrich C.J. (1940). Public policy and the nature of administrative responsibility. In: Friedrich C.J., Mason E.S. (eds). Public Policy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 3-24. Fung C.H., Lim Y.W., Mattke S., Damberg C.,
  36. Shekelle P.G. (2008). Systematic review: the evidence that publishing patient care performance data improves quality of care. Annals of internal medicine, 148: 111-123.
  37. Furrer O., Thomas H., Goussevskaia A. (2008). The structure and evolution of the strategic management field: A content analysis of 26 years of strategic management research. International Journal of Management Reviews, 10: 1-23.
  38. Gamm L.D. (1996). Dimensions of accountability for not for profit hospitals and health systems. Health Care Management Review, 21: 74-86.
  39. Garfield E., Sher I.H., Thorpie R.J. (1964). The Use of Citation Data in Writing the History of Science. Philadelphia: Institute for Scientific Information.
  40. Garfield E. (1965). Can citation indexing be automated? Statistical association methods for mechanized documentation. Symposium proceedings, 189-192.
  41. Garfinkel H. (1984). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  42. Geissbuhler A. (2013). Lessons learned implementing a regional health information exchange in Geneva as a pilot for the Swiss national eHealth strategy. International journal of medical informatics, 8: 118-124.
  43. Greenacre M. (2010). Correspondence analysis in practice. London: Chapman & Hall/CRC.
  44. Greenacre M., Blasius J. (2006). Multiple correspondence analysis and related methods. London: Chapman & Hall/CRC.
  45. Harnad S., Brody T. (2004). Comparing the impact of open access (OA) vs. non-OA articles in the same journals. D-Lib Magazine, 10(6).
  46. Harnad S., Brody T., Vallières F., Carr L., Hitchcock S., Gingras Y., Hilf E.R. (2008). The access/impact problem and the green and gold roads to open access: an update. Serials review, 34: 36-40.
  47. Hashimoto H., Ikegami N., Shibuya K., Izumida N., Noguchi H., Yasunaga H., Reich M.R. (2011).
  48. Cost containment and quality of care in Japan: is there a trade-off? The Lancet, 378: 1174-1182.
  49. He Q. (1999). Knowledge discovery through coword analysis. Library Trends, 48: 133-159.
  50. Heald D. (2006). Varieties of Transparency. In: Hood C., Heald D. (eds). Transparency. The Key to Better Governance. Proceedings of the British Academy, 25-43.
  51. Higginson J., Walters R., Fulop N. (2012). Mortality and morbidity meetings: an untapped resource for improving the governance of patient safety? BMJ Quality & Safety, 21: 576-585.
  52. Hill V., Carley K.M. (1999). An approach to identifying consensus in a subfield: The case of organizational culture. Poetics, 27: 1-30.
  53. Hoffman D.L., Franke G.R. (1986). Correspondence analysis: graphical representation of categorical data in marketing research. Journal of Marketing Research, 23: 213-227.
  54. Hoffman R.C., Schalk-Hihi C., Castner B.J., Gibson M.G., Rasmussen B.D., Zdanov A., Wlodawer
  55. A. (1994). Stoichiometry of the complex of human interleukin-4 with its receptor. FEBS letters, 347: 17-21.
  56. Hood C. (1991). A public management for all seasons? Public administration, 69: 3-19.
  57. Hood C. (1995). The ‘‘New Public Management’’ in the 1980s: variations on a theme. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 20: 93-109.
  58. Husson F., Josse J. (2014). Multiple Correspondence Analysis. In: Blasius J., Greenacre G. (eds). Visualization and Verbalization of Data. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press.
  59. Ingwersen P. (2000). The international visibility and citation impact of Scandinavian research papers in selected social science fields: The decay of a myth. Scientometrics, 49: 39-61.
  60. Inkpen A.C., Beamish P.W. (1994). An analysis of twenty-five years of research in the Journal of International Business Studies. Journal of International Business Studies, 25: 703-713.
  61. Jegadeesh N., Wu D. (2013). Word power: A new approach for content analysis. Journal of Financial Economics, 110: 712-729.
  62. Jeong Y.K., Song M., Ding Y. (2014). Content-based author co-citation analysis. Journal of Informetrics, 8: 197-211.
  63. Kamuzora P., Maluka S., Ndawi B., Byskov J., Hurtig A.K. (2013). Promoting community participation in priority setting in district health systems: experiences from Mbarali district, Tanzania. Global health action, 6.
  64. Kessler M.M. (1963). Bibliographic coupling between scientific papers. American documentation, 14: 10-25.
  65. Klenk T., Pieper J. (2012). Accountability in a Privatized Welfare State: The Case of the German Hospital Market. Administration & Society, 45: 326-356.
  66. Latour B. (1987). Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  67. Le Roux B., Rouanet H. (2010). Multiple correspondence analysis. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.
  68. Lebart L., Morineau A., Warwick K.M. (1984). Multivariate descriptive statistical analysis: correspondence analysis and related techniques for larges matrices. Chirchester: Wiley and Sons.
  69. Llewelyn H. (2013). How to promote and support a culture of patient-centred openness and transparency in the NHS. International Journal of Clinical Practice, 67: 943-946.
  70. Locke J., Perera H. (2001). The intellectual structure of international accounting in the early 1990s. International Journal of Accounting, 36: 223-249.
  71. Margolis J.D., Walsh J.P. (2003). Misery loves companies: Rethinking social initiatives by business. Administrative Science Quarterly, 48: 268-305.
  72. Marshall M., Shekelle P., Brook R., Leatherman S. (2000). Dying to know: public release of information about quality of health care. London: Nuffield Trust and Rand.
  73. Matei L. (2009). Romanian Public Management Reform. Bucharest: Economica Publishing House.
  74. Mattei P., Mitra M., Vrangbæk K., Neby S., Byrkjeflot H. (2013). Reshaping public accountability: hospital reforms in Germany, Norway and Denmark. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 79: 249-270.
  75. Merton R. (1988). The matthew effect in science, II: Cumulative advantage and the symbolism of intellectual property. Isis, 79: 606-623.
  76. Mongan J.J., Ferris T.G., Lee T.H. (2008). Options for slowing the growth of health care costs. New England Journal of Medicine, 358: 1509-1514.
  77. Morrison E.W., Bies R.J. (1991). Impression management in the feedback-seeking process: A literature review and research agenda. Academy of Management Review, 16: 522-541.
  78. Muñoz-Leiva F., Viedma-del-Jesús M.I., Sánchez-Fernández J., López-Herrera A.G. (2012). An application of co-word analysis and bibliometric maps for detecting the most highlighting themes in the consumer behaviour research from a longitudinal perspective. Quality & Quantity, 46: 1077-1095.
  79. Noyons E.C.M., Luwel M., Moed H.F. (1999). Combining mapping and citation analysis for evaluative bibliometric purposes. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50: 115-131.
  80. Nunes R., Brandão C., Rego G. (2011). Public accountability and sunshine healthcare regulation. Health Care Analysis, 19: 352-364.
  81. Nunes R., Rego G., Brandão C. (2009). Healthcare regulation as a tool for public accountability. Medicine, Healthcare and Philosophy, 12: 257-264.
  82. Onwuegbuzie A.J., Leech N.L., Collins K.M. (2012). Qualitative Analysis Techniques for the Review of the Literature. Qualitative Report, 17(28): 1-28.
  83. Osborne S.P. (2010). The New Public Governance? Emerging Perspectives on the Theory and Practice of Public Governance. Routledge: New York.
  84. Peters H.P.F., Van Raan A.F. (1994). On determinants of citation scores: A case study in chemical engineering. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 45: 39-49.
  85. Pilkington A., Liston-Heyes C. (1999). Is production and operations management a discipline? A citation/co-citation study. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 19: 7-20.
  86. Pitkin R.M., Branagan M.A., Burmeister L. (1999). Accuracy of data in abstracts of published research articles. Journal of the American Medical Association, 281: 1110-1111.
  87. Pollit C. (1993). Managerialism and the public services: Cuts or cultural change in the 1990s? Oxford: Blackwell Business.
  88. Popping R. (1999). Computer-assisted text analysis. CA: Thousand Oaks.
  89. Price D.J.D.S. (1963). Little Science, Big Science. New York: Columbia University Press.
  90. Quan S.D., Wu R.C., Rossos P.G., Arany T., Groe S., Morra D., Lau F.Y. (2013). It’s not about pager replacement: An in depth look at the interprofessional nature of communication in healthcare. Journal of Hospital Medicine, 8: 137-143.
  91. Ramos-Rodríguez A.R., Ruíz-Navarro J. (2004). Changes in the intellectual structure of strategic management research: a bibliometric study of the Strategic Management Journal, 1980-2000. Strategic Management Journal, 25: 981-1004.
  92. Revelle W. (1979). Hierarchical cluster analysis and the internal structure of tests. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 14: 57-74.
  93. Roberts C.W. (1997). Text analysis for the social sciences. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  94. Romzek B.S., Dubnick M.J. (1987). Accountability in public sector: Lessons from the Challenger tragedy. Public administration review, 47(3): 227-238.
  95. Rosenstein A.H. (1994). Cost-effective health care: tools for improvement. Health care management review, 19: 53-61.
  96. Saltman R.B., Figueras J. (1997). European health care reform: analysis of current strategies. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe.
  97. Schwartz J.C. (2013). A dose of reality for medical malpractice reform. New York University Review, 88: 1224-1307.
  98. Shahian D.M., Edwards F.H., Jacobs J.P., Prager R.L., Normand S.L.T., Shewan C.M., Grover F.L. (2011). Public reporting of cardiac surgery performance: part 1, history, rationale, consequences. The Annals of thoracic surgery, 92: 2-11.
  99. Shea K.K., Shih A., Davis K. (2007). Health Care Opinion Leaders’ Views on the Transparency of Health Care Quality and Price Information in the United States. Commonwealth Fund.
  100. Simkin M.V., Roychowdhury V.P. (2003). Read before you cite! Complex Systems, 14: 269-274.
  101. Simon H.A., Smithburg D.W., Thompson V.A. (1950). Public Administration. New York: Routledge.
  102. Small H.C. (1973). Co-citation in the scientific literature: a new measure of the relationship between two documents. Journal of the American Society of Information Science, 24: 265-269.
  103. Smith L.C. (1981). Citation analysis. Library trends, 30: 83-106.
  104. Solomon J., Knappc P., Raynorb D.K., Atkinc K. (2013). Worlds apart? An exploration of prescribing and medicine-taking decisions by patients, GPs and local policy makers. Health Policy, 112: 264-272.
  105. Stoeckle J.D., Reiser S.J. (1992). The corporate organization of hospital work: balancing professional and administrative responsibilities. Annals of internal medicine, 116: 407-413.
  106. Sugar C.A., James G.M. (2003). Finding the number of clusters in a dataset. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 98: 750-763.
  107. Tahai A., Meyer M.J. (1999). A revealed preference study of management journals’direct influences. Strategic Management Journal, 20: 279-296.
  108. Van Dalen H.P., Henkens K. (2001). What makes a scientific paper influential? The case of demographers. Scientometrics, 50: 455-482.
  109. Verbeek A., Debackere K., Luwel M., Zimmermann E. (2002). Measuring progress and evolution in science and technology–I: The multiple uses of bibliometric indicators. International Journal of Management Reviews, 4: 179-211.
  110. Vogel R., Güttel W.H. (2013). The Dynamic Capability View in Strategic Management: A Bibliometric Review. International Journal of Management Reviews, 15: 426-446.
  111. Vrangbæk K., Østergren K., Birk H.O., Winblad U. (2007). Patient reactions to hospital choice in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Health Economics, Policy and Law, 2: 125-152.
  112. Wachter R.M., Pronovost P.J. (2009). Balancing “no blame” with accountability in patient safety. The New England Journal of Medicine, 361: 1401-1406.
  113. Wang H., Gusmano M.K., Cao Q. (2011). An evaluation of the policy on community health organizations in China: will the priority of new healthcare reform in China be a success? Health Policy, 99: 37-43.
  114. Wollmann H., Schröter E. (2000). Comparing Public Sector Reform in Britain and Germany. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Marianna Mauro, Monica Giancotti, Giovanna Talarico, Mapping the field: A bibliometric analysis of accountability literature in healthcare in "MECOSAN" 101/2017, pp 7-30, DOI: 10.3280/MESA2017-101002