Financial Accountability & Management最新文献

While International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) convergence has been the face of the global accounting standardisation movement for the past few decades, accounting reforms in the public sector had started to gain momentum from the late 1990s. This paper examines the reasons for the adoption of public sector accrual accounting reforms in India. It explores the various sources of pressure influencing these reforms and the ways in which these pressures are balanced and addressed by key decisionmakers in the national and transnational contexts of an emerging economy like India. This study finds that demands for greater accountability from the public in the national context (demand pressures) as well as requests for greater transparency from international financial institutions in the transnational context (supply pressures) are two major sources of pressure that are balanced by the state in its quest for greater legitimacy. This is demonstrated through a triggering event such as political scandals evoking responses from the government to reinforce its weakened legitimacy by adopting public sector accounting reforms. Extant literature on public sector accounting reforms, mostly focuses on the phases where the standards are being actually implemented by the country. Studies exploring decision-making processes that lead to actual implementation of accrual accounting reforms are limited. This study contributes to existing literature by examining the decision-making process that ensues before the actual use of international standards in public sector accounting reforms and demonstrates the significant role that institutional influences play in defining such decision-making processes. The role of these institutional influences also draw attention to the probable disparities between rationales and actual reasons for government accounting reforms undertaken by developing countries.

Departmental and central government accountability to the UK Parliament was based principally on cash transactions for a period of over 300 years commencing with the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Beginning in the second decade of the 19th century, recurrent proposals for the replacement of cash accounting by accruals accounting were founded on the conviction that ‘commercial’ accounting practices provided a more effective basis for performance measurement, financial control and public accountability. This paper studies the progress of these initiatives through time, with Treasury resistance to the adoption of private sector-type accounting practices by administrative departments recognised as a persistent and effective barrier to innovation up until the 1980s.

This multiple-case study examines the adoption of a case management system (CMS) across two community organisations in Australia using organizational routines as a theoretical lens. Both the adopters and the vendor were interviewed to explore how the CMS was instituted in the adopting organisations. Many of the concerns or problems associated with a CMS as reported in the literature were not supported in this study. Although the two cases differed significantly in terms of size and resources, the findings show that the adoption of CMS led to new ostensive and performative routines around data collection and service delivery in both organisations. This had implications for accountability and organisational learning. In particular, better access to data improved visibility and reporting on the provision of services and subsequently supported fundraising. This study also highlights some of the situational factors that facilitate or impede the transition to a CMS such as the critical role of the CMS administrator and the way the change is managed in adopting organisations. Overall, this study contributes to the discourse on CMS by providing some evidence to support a more nuanced view of CMS including as ‘systems of accountability’ or even a ‘necessity’ of the digital age rather than merely as ‘instruments of neoliberal policy’ and enablers of bureaucratisation of social work.

This article contributes to prior accounting and public management research on performance measurement systems’ (PMSs) effectiveness in professional organisations, exploring how medical professionals’ perception regarding goal importance, knowledge of performance information, and accessibility of performance information affect their achievement of individual-level performance targets. The study draws on primary and secondary data from 128 Italian public healthcare professionals about their perceptions of performance information and their factual performance. The findings show that perceived goal importance is positively related to one's knowledge of individual and peer performance information; that this relation is positively moderated by perceived information accessibility, and that knowledge of individual (but not peer) performance information fully mediates the relation between perceived goal importance and achievement of individual-level performance targets.

Public sector managers are increasingly subject to management controls. In this study, we determine how management controls in public sector organizations influence managers’ well-being at work. Based on central beliefs and concepts in the management control literature and self-determination theory, we develop, test, and confirm a theoretical model predicting that positive effects of management controls on public managers’ well-being are explained by increased role clarity and negative effects by increased control burden, which in turn affects managers’ self-determination. The model was tested through web survey responses from 1,029 managers from ten Swedish local government organizations. Our research contributes to the literature on well-being effects of management controls by specifying how positive and negative effects on managers’ well-being occur.

This paper compares audit regulatory space in local government between the U.K.’s four countries – England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. It addresses current arrangements and practices, their historical background, and rationales for regulation in order to derive lessons for the future of public audit. It draws on the notion of regulatory space as extended through new audit spaces that specifically include public audit. The study is based on interviews with audit professionals and policy makers in each country, extensive documentation review, and observation. The comparison is structured by four themes: ‘Organisation and fragmentation’ concerns how the system is accredited and imbued with institutional capital. ‘Independence and competition’ addresses the independence of accounting firms and auditors, ‘audit scope’ reporting, and ‘inspection’ the assessments and rankings that have become part of public audit. The four countries exhibited similar emphasis on financial audit and reporting. They treated performance and fairness aspects differently.

This paper investigates the role of calculative practices in the phase of implementing strategies for enhanced sustainability in a city organization. Sustainability as a concept is arguably difficult to handle at the organizational level, becoming a challenge for public organizations in practice. This paper builds on the notion of performativity and follows a strategy implementation process over time in a city, allowing us to see how the sustainability ambitions altered over the observed period. This led to the conclusion that when sustainability is to be implemented, there is a shift towards financial control and calculative practices assume various roles.