A theory of public health sector report: forging a new path

With the aim of shedding light on issues surrounding the development and evaluation of report, this paper offers a theory for facilitating and legitimizing an accountability‐based discourse and disclosure in the public health sector. The project adopts Laughlin’s (1995) vision of middle range theory and an accountability perspective to justify the form and normative perspective which shapes the skeletal model to follow. Formulated in part from an analysis of the health management and public sector accounting literatures, the model is now empirically supported from the preferences of health sector accountees in New Zealand. The result is a conceptual construct which is both considerate of and challenging to the standard financial accounting model. The skeletal model consists of five conceptual categories, their interrelationships and properties. The theoretical model considers and mandates illumination of political incentives, incorporates the assumption that accounting can be constitutive as well as reflective and is sympathetic to a wide range of interests and contextual distinctions.