In the future, environmental disasters and resource constraints will continue to impact the public sector audit environment. Governments will be held responsible for their responses and the corresponding financial impacts, particularly rising levels of public debt. Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) are vital in keeping governments accountable. Yet, they also need legitimacy and they are subject to

In recent years, the urge to make public sector organizations accountable has resulted in a wide range of citizen-centered financial reporting tools that aim to overcome the limits of traditional financial reporting. To date, the debate on these public accountability innovations has mainly focused on the reasons underpinning their adoption from the users’ perspective, while how preparers affect accountability

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

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

The public sector has embraced a user‐orientation paradigm, which has expanded through the open and democratic medium of social media. Although the potential of this digital technology and its visible outcomes have been analyzed in previous studies, there is virtually nothing on the complexity behind its implementation. This paper uses a case study involving three Italian museums to explore how social

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

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

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

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

Corporations are under increasing pressure to provide information about their corporate social responsibility activities. However, there is limited work on how firms measure the value of their philanthropic giving. The value of a philanthropic act can be difficult to ascertain as it often relates to unique goods that do not have a market value. The paper examines the processes a sample of (mainly family‐run)

Public trust serves as an important foundation for the charity sector, but has been diminishing in many countries. Charity regulation exists to promote public trust in charities, but we know little about how it is implemented by regulators to build public trust. This research examines regulators’ efforts to build public trust in charities by promoting and implementing regulation that increases accountability

This exploratory study identifies that more can be understood about how accountability operates within an increasingly complex non‐profit environment by applying stakeholder theory to managers and their decision‐making in non‐profit theatre organisations (NPTOs). On the surface, this may appear to be ground already covered. Previous research has explored the challenges of achieving more holistic accountability

In general, prior research offers empirical support for the idea that audit industry specialisation is associated with higher audit quality in public sector organisations. A limitation in this literature, however, is that inferences are drawn from analyses confined to the audit firm level alone. In order to offer further insights into the relationship between audit industry specialisation and audit

The third sector encompasses many types of not‐for‐profit organisations (NPOs). This results in a diverse sector, where accountabilities vary and are complex. In this paper, we explore notions of accountability at the micro level of social analysis, between individuals, and enacted through social interaction. We aim to provide detail on how accountability is enacted at this level of analysis, and the

We investigate the link between social capital and business model choice of financial cooperatives (Shinkin banks) in Japan. We identify two forms of business model, which concentrate on the issuance of loans funded by deposits (traditional) and the investment and management of large investment portfolios (new). Traditional business models are more likely to emerge in geographic areas with higher levels

The Office of the Auditor General, Republic of Fiji was founded in 1970 on audit principles and national laws inspired by its former British colonial power. The Fijian Office operates in a challenging national context of coup‐determined regimes, military authority and ethnically‐dividing social practices. The purpose of this study is to uncover the processes and dynamics that explain how this Office

Issues of accountability, legitimacy and trust have remained at the forefront of debate surrounding non‐profit organisations and their activities. The purpose of this study is to review the literature on non‐profit accountability from the lens of organisational legitimacy. Specifically, we ask what we can learn from the literature on non‐profit organisation (NPO) accountability and consider what further

Trust in charities is critical in terms of the health of the sector, and also in relation to the establishment and maintenance of social cohesiveness. Moreover, lack of trust can not only damage the charity sector (having negative impacts on public perceptions and donor giving) but can also undermine attempts at building social capital. Yet, how trust is defined, the various forms that it takes and

This paper contributes to the limited empirical enquiries into the role of accounting in affecting medical professionals’ financial accountability perceptions and related outcomes and performance. It examines the associations among formal and informal feedback processes, managers’ financial accountability, work attitudes, and performance. Results of our survey to a sample of 115 senior medical managers

Professions enjoy privileged positions and expend efforts to sustain these in public and interprofessional domains. This research investigates a previously vacant and largely uncontested jurisdiction in the UK charity sector that was claimed, maintained and subsequently expanded by the accountancy profession. We find that the dominant involvement of the accountancy profession leads to a charity regulatory

The accounting and reporting of public—private partnerships (PPPs) is a matter of extensive debate and is associated with a compelling incentive to follow the PPP route for the construction of public infrastructures, rather than traditional public procurement, even if the PPP route is not affordable and fails to achieve value for money in comparison to traditional public procurement. The aim of this

While corruption and lack of accountability are admittedly global problems, there is a way in which African countries occupy a prominent space within this discourse. This position is reinforced by the persistent increase in the levels of corruption in a number of African countries over the recent past. One factor that is understudied in the accounting literature and yet could help to explain the escalation

Performance measurement (PM) systems where local governments performance is exposed to public scrutiny have been demanded in many OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. The experiences from the Swedish Open Comparisons (OC) system have been highlighted as a particularly interesting case because it bears similarities with both Anglo-Saxon countries concerning coverage

This study investigates the multifaceted nature of accountability mechanisms in Australian not-for-profit organizations (NFPs), the association between organizational culture and the use of these mechanisms, and the association between accountability mechanisms and perceived NFP social performance. The findings support the theorization of multifaceted accountability mechanisms in NFPs, including upward

Local governments are bringing previously outsourced services back in-house. Research into explanations for sourcing decisions in the public sector is growing, however, few researchers have investigated drivers of both outsourcing and backsourcing in local public-governance organizations. In this study we utilize transaction cost economic theory (TCE) and political ideology to investigate underlying

We analyse how public managers interact with external stakeholders during cutbacks. Relying on strategic management scholarship, we develop an argument on why public managers decide for a closed or an open cutback management strategy. In the former, they try to close off the process for external stakeholders, whereas, in the latter, they actively engage with external stakeholders. A multiple qualitative

This contribution introduces the special issue on the roles of accounting practices in the context of reforms to and within public service organizations. The papers in the special issue provide fresh insights into the ways in which calculative practices intervene in public services, and thus come to affect the experiences of such actors, offering important perspectives on how the latter act to resist

The first author is Senior Lecturer inAccounting andFinanceatCardiffUniversity. The secondauthor is an independentpublic finance andaudit consultant. The third author is a VisitingResearchFellowatCardiffUniversity. Abstract In recent years, substantial changes have been implemented to the audit regimes for local authorities in several countries. Following the abolishment of the Audit Commission, a

Prior literature on nonprofit organizations (NPOs) has focused on the effect of board composition on organizational efficiency. However, this research is focused on presenting an analysis of the relationship between the financial vulnerability of NPOs and their boards. Although studies of for-profit organizations have confirmed this relationship both theoretically and empirically, it is a novel one

This paper draws on agency theory, as extended by the social theory of agency (STA) (Wiseman, Cuevas‐Rodríguez & Gomez‐Mejia, 2012), to examine the association between governance arrangements, reliance on government funding, chief executive officer (CEO) non‐profit experience, and CEO compensation in the UK charity sector. We rely on a hand‐collected data for the largest 240 charities and find that

This paper questions to what extent particular calculative practices used for inter‐organisational decision‐making help or hinder boundary spanners meet performativity ideals. It uses programmatic rationalities of government as a framework to study reciprocity between them and the conditions of performativity. Empirical data were collected from healthcare commissioning spaces of English National Health