Accounting and the post-new public management

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to reflect various pathways for public sector accounting and accountability research in a post-new public management (NPM) context. Design/methodology/approach: The paper first discusses the relationship between NPM and public sector accounting research. It then explores the possible stimuli that inter-disciplinary accounting scholars may derive from recent public administration studies, public policy and societal trends, highlighting possible ways to extend public sector accounting research and strengthen dialogue with other disciplines. Findings: NPM may have represented a golden age, but also a “golden cage,” for the development of public sector accounting research. The paper reflects possible ways out of this golden cage, discussing future avenues for public sector accounting research. In doing so, it highlights the opportunities offered by re-considering the “public” side of accounting research and shifting the attention from the public sector, seen as a context for public sector accounting research, to publicness, as a concept central to such research. Originality/value: The paper calls for stronger engagement with contemporary developments in public administration and policy. This could be achieved by looking at how public sector accounting accounts for, but also impacts on, issues of wider societal relevance, such as co-production and hybridization of public services, austerity, crises and wicked problems, the creation and maintenance of public value and democratic participation

What counts as ‘Good’ Qualitative Accounting Research? Researchers’ Perspectives on Assessing and Proving Research Quality

Purpose This study explores the everyday experiences of researchers in assessing their own and others' research, highlighting what “good” qualitative accounting research is from their perspectives. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is based on interviews with accounting scholars from the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and Australia, with diverse ethnic background and methodological preferences. Findings Interviewees pointed to a plurality of practical, and to some extent tacit, ways in which they demonstrate and assess the quality of research, concerning “contribution”, “consistency” and “confidence”, with generalizability being seen as more controversial and difficult to attain. In general, interviewees highlighted the underlying ambiguity on what constitutes good research in the qualitative accounting community, contrasting it to the perceived stronger clarity to be found in the quantitative accounting community. This was seen as potentially strengthening the positions of “gatekeepers” in the accounting communities, and encouraging conformance and “signaling” behaviors, at the risk of hampering innovation. Originality/value The main critical issues affecting qualitative research quality highlighted by interviewees concern the engagement with the world of practice, and with theory and literature, the importance of accounting for the analysis of qualitative data and for the messiness of the underlying process, and the implicit search for compliance with editors' and community's expectations and conventions. These findings suggest the need to continue debating how to assess the quality of qualitative research in everyday activities, and reflect on how to promote acceptance and openness to pluralism, in scientific communities, as well as in data collection, analysis, in the theorizing, and in connecting epistemology and methodology

The role(s) of accounting and performance measurement systems in contemporary public administration

The spate of public sector reforms which have taken place in recent decades has triggered the development of a new body of research around public sector accounting and performance measurement both in public administration as well as in the (public sector) accounting literature. However, studies in accounting and public administration have at times ignored each other, proceeding in parallel. This symposium encourages the adoption of interdisciplinary perspectives in exploring the myriad roles played by accounting and performance measurement systems in contemporary public administration. Emphasizing that accounting and performance measurement systems are socially, politically, culturally constructed and, in turn, are implicated in the creation of organizations, society and political values, this symposium aims to extend the dialogue between accounting and public administration scholars in exploring how accounting, accountability and performance measurement considerations are connected to policy-making, public services and, more generally, the building and maintenance of modern states and democracies

How do governments cope with austerity? The roles of accounting in shaping governmental financial resilience

Purpose: Studies on how accounting is involved in financial crises and austerity are limited. The context of austerity provides an interesting opportunity to explore the role of accounting in shaping governmental financial resilience, i.e. the capacity of governments to cope with shocks affecting their financial conditions. Design/methodology/approach: Based on a multiple case analysis of eight Italian municipalities, this paper explores how accounting contributes to the government capacities which are used to anticipate and respond to shocks affecting public finances. Findings: Municipalities cope with financial shocks differently; accounting can support self–regulation and can affect internally-led or externally-led adaptation. Different combinations of anticipatory and coping capacities lead to different responses to shocks. Practical implications: The findings can be useful for public managers, policymakers and oversight bodies for strengthening governmental financial resilience in the face of crises and austerity. Originality/value: The results provide evidence of the conditions, contexts, processes under which accounting becomes a medium which can support both anticipation of and coping with financial shocks, supporting cuts in some cases and resistance in the short run or driving long-term changes intended to maintain public services as much intact as possible. This highlights the existence of different patterns of governmental financial resilience and thus indicates ways of best preserving the service of the public interest

The future of public audit

Public sector audit is a vital activity within democratic states, which underpins the relationship between the government and the governed, the executive and the legislature, and different parts of the government. While there has been a lot of exceptional work in recent years on public sector audit, the sector faces new challenges. These challenges include regulatory space considerations, digitalization, the impact of service delivery design change, how audit and accountability arrangements address crises such as austerity, Brexit, black lives matter, climate change, disease in the form of COVID-19 and war, and increased skepticism about the role of audit in society more generally. In this special issue, a group of scholars came together to describe this crisis in public audit, how the current literature addresses different facets of it and show how future research can contribute to analyzing it. This introductory article provides a brief summary of the current context of the “what, why, when, how, where and who” of public audit, before considering the contribution of each individual paper in this special issue to assisting in understanding the crisis of public audit, and finally setting out a conclusion and future directions

The interplay between home and host logics of accountability in multinational corporations (MNCs): the case of the Fundão dam disaster

Purpose: The major purpose of this paper is to answer the overarching questions of how multinational corporations (MNCs) address the multiple institutional logics of accountability and pressures of the field in which they operate and how the dominant logic changes and shifts in response to such pressures pre- and post-disaster situation. Design/methodology/approach: In-depth interpretive textual analyses of multiple longitudinal data sets are conducted to study the case of the Fundão dam disaster. The data sources include historical documents, academic articles and public institutional press releases from 2000 to 2016, covering the environment leading to the case study incident and its aftermath. Findings: The findings reveal how MNCs' plurality of and, at times, conflicting institutional logics shape the organizational behaviors, actions and nonactions of actors pre-, peri- and post-disaster. More specifically, the predominance bureaucracy embedded in the state-corporatist logic of the host country before a disaster allows the strategic subunit of an MNC to continue operating while causing various forms of environmental damage until a globally visible disaster triggers a reversal in the dominant logic toward the embrace of wider, global, emergent social and environmental accountability. Originality/value: This paper contributes to discussions regarding the need to explore in depth of how MNCs respond to multiple institutional pressures in practice. This study extends the literature concerning disaster accountability, state-corporatism and logic-shifting by exploring how MNCs respond to the plurality of institutional logics and pressures over time and showing how, in some cases, logics not only reinforce but also contrast with each other and how a globally exposed disaster may trigger a shift in the dominant logic governing MNCs' responses

Building legitimacy for European public sector accounting standards (EPSAS): a governance perspective

Purpose: This paper looks at the EPSAS project development path to explore how governance and legitimacy issues intertwine when a new standard-setting system is developed. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative interpretative multimethod approach is adopted, which encompasses document analysis and participative observations. Findings: The analysis shows the role of governance dimensions, including institutional participation and consensus, in the process for securing the legitimacy of accounting standards and the related setting processes, pointing to the critical issues emerging throughout the development of the EPSAS project. Originality/value: The definition of public sector accounting standards poses significant challenges to the accounting profession and regulators alike. A paradigmatic case of such challenges is represented by the decisions to develop harmonised European public sector accounting standards (EPSAS). A key contribution of this paper is to connect legitimacy dimensions with network governance, offering a view of the input, output and procedural dimensions associated with decisions to legitimise EU public sector accounting standards and how these may be affected by network governance

Do conformity and bailouts affect misreporting? The case of public healthcare organisations

Most literature on the antecedents of misreporting in the public sector focuses on the propensity to report financial breakeven, with limited attention to the regulatory and normative incentives that may alter such propensity. This study provides novel explanations for public sector organisations' deviation from breakeven. Its underlying assumption is that misreporting may be shaped by mimetic pressures encouraging conformity as well as regulatory pressures conveyed through soft budget constraints. The empirical analysis includes all Italian public healthcare organisations over 17 years. The findings suggest that public healthcare organisations may manipulate accruals not only to achieve financial breakeven, but also to conform with peers’ financial performance or to worsen reported financial performance in anticipation of a bailout