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Government accounting shows the assets and resources of the government, the changes that occur in them, to provide the necessary information to evaluate the effectiveness of the government in revenue and expense management, and to produce the information required by economic management. In this context, the past, present, and future of the Turkish government accounting system discussed in the theoretical framework in the study.

This paper aims to evaluate responses to the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board’s proposed conceptual framework for evidence of support of new public management doctrines by key stakeholders, namely, accounting professionals, government agencies and international bodies.

The research uses a content analysis of response letters to select phases of the conceptual framework project to identify themes/principles pointing to acceptance or rejection of new public management principles by stakeholders.

Accounting professionals tend to support proposals that are consistent with principles of new public management providing evidence of normative and mimetic isomorphic pressure to align public and private sector accounting practices. Some government agencies and international organisations appear to have conformed but the majority resist efforts to incorporate a new public management discourse in public sector accounting.

The study is based on a content analysis of publically available response letters. It does not engage directly with respondents. In addition, not all stakeholders have submitted an equal number of response letters, with the result that it was not possible to compare responses from the developed and developing world or according to variations in legal and governance systems.

The study provides empirical evidence of different perspectives of the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board’s conceptual framework project, which have not been considered explicitly by the previous research. The findings support the view that the accounting profession, as an integral part of the capital market system, exerts pressure to drive standardisation of financialised accounting practices. In contrast, government agencies support accounting systems aligned with conventional accountability principles aligned with jurisdiction-specific contexts. The interaction of these opposing perspectives is a primary determinant of change in accounting practice in the public sector space.

Heritage assets (HAs) are important goods or properties that define a country’s culture, history, and identity. Public sector entities are the primary custodians of a nation’s heritage properties; however, many local museums and historic houses are managed by private not-for-profit (NFP) organisations that essentially act to conserve these heritage places.

Through a documentary analysis, this chapter aims to investigate the points of convergence and the differences between accounting policies for governmental heritage and private NFP organisations.

The study demonstrates that even private NFP entities present the same characteristics as public sector ones in the accounting of heritage goods and that there are certain accounting standards being equally applicable; therefore, the accounting policies for governmental heritage are in accordance with the accounting policies for NFP organisations such as museums, art galleries, charities, churches, for their heritage goods.

The purpose of this article is to contribute to an ongoing dialogue between practitioners and academics. This article describes the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB) recent strategies and highlights the IPSASB's increasing outreach to academics.

This is a practitioner's viewpoint which reflects the IPSASB's publicly available documents, and the opinions of a practitioner directly involved in the IPSASB's work and International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) development.

The findings are that the IPSASB has increased its outreach to academics and now academics have more opportunities to engage with the IPSASB and IPSAS developments. The IPSASB's strategy has remained relatively constant over time, focusing on IPSAS to address public sector-specific issues, alignment with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and reduction of differences between IPSAS and Government Finance Statistics (GFS) reporting guidelines.

The limitations of this article (which are also its strength in terms of fitness for purpose) are that as a practitioner's viewpoint it provides a brief overview and personal judgments, rather than an empirical analysis of developments applying a theoretical framework.

The practical implications were IPSASB's increased outreach to the research community providing opportunities for academics to have increased input into IPSAS development, with likely benefits to researchers and the IPSASB.

Practitioners’ engagement with academics supports increased understanding of the respective views leading to better outcomes for practitioners and academics working in the area of public sector financial reporting and its regulation.

This article is the first to (a) describe the IPSASB's increasing outreach to academics during 2019–2020 and (b) compare the IPSASB's strategies for the period of 2019–2023, with its strategies since the beginning of IPSAS developments in 1996–1997.

The principle of prudence plays a critical role in the design of national and international public sector accounting. Whereas in private sector accounting there is a substantial body of literature with regard to conservatism, the academic debate on the prudence principle in public sector accounting has only started recently. The aim of this chapter is to analyse whether the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) address asymmetric prudence with respect to measurement. This chapter shows that the existence of requirements leading to asymmetric prudence with regard to the measurement of assets is widespread throughout the suite of IPSASs.

Within the stream of research on public sector accounting standards, heritage asset accounting represents a difficult and challenging issue. This paper intends to join the debate on heritage reporting by carrying out a critical review of the Consultation Paper (CP) “Financial Reporting for Heritage in the Public Sector” issued by the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB) in order to highlight its strengths and weaknesses and to make recommendations.

To this end, the current study adopts document analysis as a qualitative research method by referring to Italy as a typical and critical case study. Moreover, the authors actively took part in the Italian working group on heritage assets reporting, so they are well-informed people about the Italian point of view as well as the broad discussion underpinning the Italian response.

Evidence demonstrates that, although the proposals included in the CP represent a new step towards an organic regulation of heritage asset reporting, if these preliminary views are confronted with the reality of an emblematic context, as in the Italian case, much room for improvement remains regarding the definition, recognition, measurement and disclosure of such assets.

The originality of the paper lies in its contribution to overcoming the current controversial aspects of heritage assets reporting and the issuing of an accounting standard. In doing so, the authors also attempt to answer the call made by Anessi-Pessina et al. (2019) to investigate in detail an individual country experience to better understand the state of the art in national and international accounting standards on heritage assets.

In recent years, accounting for heritage assets has evolved but continuing the diversity in reporting practices remains problematic. Traditional cash-based budgets are still common in governmental accounting in some countries, but these ignore heritage assets as they are non-realisable and often do not generate revenue. Heritage assets do, however, incur cash outflows. The adoption of accrual accounting for recording heritage assets raises the technical issues of recognition and measurement of such assets, both in the balance sheet and income statements.

This chapter examines the financial reporting environment for heritage assets in New Zealand (NZ). The authors provide evidence on the reporting practices of heritage assets by five of NZ’s significant museums during the period 2011–2020, under IAS 16 and IPSAS 17 requirements. The authors analyse disclosures on heritage assets in the financial reports of these museums, including accounting policies, valuation and measurement, income statement impact, and related notes.

The findings suggest that, despite the existence of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) (IAS 16) and International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) (IPSAS 17) reporting standards during this period, a variety of reporting practices exist among NZ museums. For example, heritage assets are recognised either at fair value or historical cost on the balance sheet or not recognised in the financial statements at all. These findings suggest substantial non-uniformity in the actual measurement and reporting of heritage assets. They are of interest to policy-makers and regulators, particularly in countries that are currently considering adoption of IPSAS.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the reasons why Sri Lanka adopted International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) recently. Many less developed countries (LDCs) have introduced IPSAS during the recent past. However, little research has been conducted to study the New Public Financial Management and accrual accounting and their impact on LDCs.

Using a qualitative approach, the methods of this paper consist of interviews, a documentary review and participatory observation in the Ministry of Finance and Planning (MOFP) and Auditor General’s Department of Sri Lanka, and present a critical interpretation supported by the perspective of globalisation.

The findings of the research indicate that the public sector reforms and the transition from cash accounting to accrual accounting in the public sector have been strongly affected by the global pressures imposed by international agencies such as International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB) and the World Bank (WB). Empirical evidence shows the dysfunctional impact of globalisation in the public sector accounting standards as there are major structural issues yet to resolve. There are increasing doubts over whether the change to accrual accounting is worth the costs and the additional risks involved.

The results of the interviews are based on the knowledge and past experiences of interviewees. What is generalisable is an understanding of the processes and mechanisms that relate to the way the public sector accounting functions.

This paper adds new literature on public sector accounting in LDCs, which recognises the nexus and interests of international agencies and practice of public sector accounting.

Recognition, measurement and disclosure of public sector assets constitute relevant matters for national and international public sector accounting standard-setting. This chapter develops a theoretical analysis drawing upon a dualistic approach contrasting current value and historical cost accounting models. Accordingly, the latter should be adapted and then preferred to cope with public sector specificities, with a view to providing information for and enforcing accountability to citizens and their political representatives. Drawing upon this theoretical setting, our analysis develops a consistent design for the overarching conceptual framework for assets in general, providing illustrative examples for specific categories such as financial, heritage, natural and military assets.