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The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether higher education institutions (HEIs) in EU Member States are aware of the relevance of the ongoing reforms in public sector accounting (PSA) and the need to prepare their students to become expert professionals in that area. It particularly assesses whether these organizations currently provide, or will provide in the near future, education on International Public Sector Accounting Standard (IPSAS)/EPSAS, so that a sufficient number of graduates will be ready to match the foreseeable demand for experts in IPSAS/EPSAS.

Adopting a purposive sample, the paper compares the situation in four EU countries (Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain). Data have been obtained through a questionnaire provided to selected professors in relevant HEIs in the selected countries.

HEIs are giving only limited room to PSA and financial management, with differences in terms of program offerings and coverage of topics among the four countries. Furthermore, in most cases, the programs are adapted to the national budgetary and accounting standards and courses are seldom focused on the IPSASs.

The paper contributes to the literature on PSA harmonization, through an innovative analysis of PSA and financial management teaching, both at national and international levels.

Public financial management has been characterized by the implementation of several innovations and reforms that embrace different areas and scope. These reforms aim at expenditure rationalization and efficiency enhancement, as well as the improvement of accountability and performance. Despite research having already paid attention to these innovations and reforms, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats empirically faced by public sector organizations still need to be investigated. This editorial introduces the special issue by emphasizing on the lessons that can be learned from past reform experiences.

The editorial synthesizes some of the findings of the previous literature and evidences the necessity of both successful and unsuccessful stories, presenting a future agenda of research which emphasizes the use of case studies as a suitable method to get insights out of multiple experiences.

The four articles presented in this special issue, covering the topics of accrual accounting adoption, the use of financial statements by councilors, the use of performance information by politicians and the outsourcing of auditing in local governments, provide an overview of the efforts and challenges faced by public administrations by analyzing the influence of the institutional context, the relevance of political implications and their practical footprint.

In this special issue, four successful stories that touch upon multiple facets of public financial management in different country contexts are discussed, and they signal important takeaway messages for further reforms.

The goal of this exploratory study was to investigate if, when asked to state their preferences for the allocation of public monies toward broad governmental functions, individuals state them at random or if their choice follows some rational pattern that can be traced using explanatory variables.

The paper presents the results of a survey conducted in Greece, Italy and Switzerland where the contingent allocation method was applied to a hypothetical allocation scenario of public monies to the functions of the government.

Findings based on 428 answers revealed that individuals were able to state their preferences for the various functions of the government as well as discriminate between the relative utility of each task and that the country context and personal characteristics significantly influence the respondents' allocations.

From a policy perspective, understanding citizen preferences in budget allocation may help governments rationalize the spending of public money.

This paper illustrates the aims and the contents of the 1995 Local Government Accounting Act, which introduced an accrual-based financial reporting for Italian municipalities and provinces. To this end, this paper focuses on a sample of 23 local governments that produced these reports for the first time in 1998, and highlights a series of problems that emerged with regard to both communicational efficacy and fair presentation. The conclusions summarize the major gaps between the reform’s objectives and actual effects, and explain the reasons for these gaps and formulate some suggestions in order to re-design the system.

This paper aims to outline the contents of the special issue on public management reform in countries in the Napoleonic administrative tradition, discussing alternative explanatory frameworks, and proposing paths for future research.

This article provides reviews of the papers in the special issue.

Some broad sets of factor affecting implementation of public management reform in Napoleonic countries are outlined, schematised in a specific table, and discussed in the light of potential alternative frameworks, like cultural analysis.

Research limitations include the availability of empirical evidence given the width of the phenomenon under investigation (public management reform in five countries). Implications for the development of a broader comparative research agenda on countries in the Napoleonic administrative tradition (and others) are proposed.

The special issue, of which this paper provides an overview, fills a gap in the literature by providing systematic and comparative analysis of public management reform in five under‐investigated countries in the Napoleonic administrative tradition, arguably an important contribution to the widening of the comparative research agenda in public management.

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.

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.

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.

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.