How Can Accrual Accounting Be Suitable for the Public Sector? The Possible Determinants of the Successful Reforms

Balázs Tóth ()
Additional contact information
Balázs Tóth: University of Szeged, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Institute of Finance and International Economic Relations

A chapter in Digitalization in Finance and Accounting, 2021, pp 243-253 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract From the late 1970s, the demand for wider public sector reforms has increased. These reforms aim to make the public sector more efficient and make the policymakers more accountable for their decisions. The role and the method of accounting became one of the most debated parts of the new concept of the public sector. Most of the governments reformed their accounting and budgeting systems less or more. The most significant trend is the adoption of accrual accounting into the public sector; however, the suitability of the accruals is disputed. The adoption of accrual accounting resulted in diverse outcomes in different countries. The aim of this chapter is to find the reasons for the divergence of the results and identify the main determinants of successful adoption and operation. The examined studies highlight that the introduction of accrual accounting has a wide range of outcomes. The data created by the new accounting systems are usually unexploited. The result of the reforms is influenced by the training of the accountants, the development of the previous accounting system, and the quality of the IT systems, but other factors can have a significant impact, too.

Keywords: Accrual accounting; Public sector; Public sector accounting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:prbchp:978-3-030-55277-0_22

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030552770

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-55277-0_22

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().