The introduction of accruals accounting – at the expense of giving up traditional cash-based systems – has been argued a central aspect of New Public Financial Management (NPFM) reforms (Olson et al. 1998; Lapsley 1999). The International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) which have been strongly inspired by the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), have been claimed to better meet the specific information needs in the public sector, to enhance comparability and to improve transparency and reliability of public accounts (IFAC 2016; Bellanca and Vandernoot 2014).
Governments that are confronted with the decision to adopt IPSAS face a trade-off between (full) comparability of reports/budgets and adoption of standards to domestic specifics. So far, extant both national (e.g., Oulasvirta 2014, Gomez et al. 2015) and international studies (e.g. Christiaens et al. 2010 and 2015) have mostly focused on survey-based comparisons of the reactions of governments towards IPSAS, differentiating merely between full adoption and non-adoption of standards. However, little is known yet, from a comparative perspective, about the specific motives and reasons of governments for their (diverging) strategies in the spectrum between full adoption (no change of major contents or omission of single standards), translation (selection of certain standards, change of content) and non-adoption.
Our paper aims to address this research gap. Focusing on the financial reporting of selected European governments with different administrative traditions on both central and sub-national/regional level (Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, UK, France and Estonia), this research, first, aims to map the status quo of IPSAS adoption. Furthermore, the specific motives of governments for non-adoption, adaptation and full adoption of IPSAS are explored, together with governments’ positions towards competing accounting standards like IFRS, EPSAS or national private/public sector standards.
The proposed paper draws on previous research on ‘standardization’ (Canning and O’Dwyer 2013; Brunsson and Jacobsson 2002) and ‘glocalization’ of ideas (Czarniawska 2012; Drori et al. 2014) as conceptual background. Standards make coordination and cooperation between adopters easier (Brunsson and Jacobsson, 2002). With the concept of standardization, the effects of diverging reactions to global accounting standards can be examined in-depth from the adopters’ perspective. Adopters can react to competing standards in different ways, e.g. by blending or converging. Glocalization, on the other hand, can be used to analyze the “amalgamation across cultural, national, and regional divides, as well as across historical (dis-)continuities” (Drori et al. 2014:5) and explore the reasons of diverging national reactions of EU countries towards “glocal” accounting standards (e.g. IPSAS).
The authors explore – primarily via document analysis and evaluation of expert opinions (e.g. senior bureaucrats, politicians, auditors, accounting professionals and academics) – if there is a common trend of deviations, which accounting issues are ‘typical’ for adaptation of a certain IPSAS standard, and if these deviations would be related to a controversial debate (e.g. in academic community or in IPSAS Board) about a respective standard. Finally, the findings will be discussed against the above mentioned theoretical approaches of ‘standardization’ and ‘glocalization’.
G1 - Accounting and Accountability – Constructing society – History, culture, politics and
