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This paper seeks to explore the role of public sector accountants in the new millennium. Our contention is that the past (in terms of public sector reforms and ‘traditional’ accounting practices) will strongly influence the public sector accountant in the future. In order to illustrate this, we consider the key reforms which have taken place within the public sector over the last two decades, and the role of the accountant therein. We assess the extent to which these changes will continue to impact the accountant in the future. We also consider that the accountant is constrained by the past, in terms of the continuing dominance of certain accounting practices. The role of the accountant in the new millennium can therefore be seen in terms of both continuity and change.

This paper aims to examine the actions of public sector accountants in the New Zealand government departments as they respond to the demands of the Central Treasury.

The analysis is developed through an understanding of the secondary literature and practical experience of the first author who worked in the New Zealand public sector as a public sector accountant from 1972 to 1998. Both authors have remained active in the public sector through research and practice. The first author's last three placements were being Director Financial Management in the Ministry of Energy, Assistant Secretary in the Department of Maori Affairs and finally as CFO at the Ministry of Education. The first author has been a close observer of the Budget and was a participant at the departmental level for over 20 years.

The public sector reforms have posed challenges for public sector accountants. The arrival of accrual output based budgeting shaped a reconfiguration of accountants' identities. The politicians made public sector accountants the central entity of accrual output based budgeting and thus responsible for increasing public sector efficiency.

The research is limited to public sector in New Zealand only.

This study would be of use to practitioners interested in the pressures and opportunities which arise out of a particular constellation of administrative roles.

The administrative history, in particular, by senior officers is often unwritten for the public sector offices.

This is a descriptive piece on the role of public sector accountants and contributes to the understanding of how financial accountability works within the New Zealand Central Government.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how an accounting association and its key members define, control, and claim their knowledge; adopt a closure and/or openness policy to enhance their status/influence; and respond to structural/institutional forces from international organisations and/or the state in a particular historical context, such as a globalised/neo-liberalised setting.

The authors draw on Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical tools (field, capital, habitus, and doxa) to understand how public sector accrual accounting was defined, and how the Korean Association for Government Accounting was formed and represented as a group with public sector accounting expertise. The research context was the implementation of accrual accounting in South Korea between 1997/1998, when the Asian financial crisis broke out, and 2006/2007, when accrual accounting was enforced by legislation. The authors interviewed social actors recognised as public sector accounting experts, in addition to examining related documents such as articles in academic journals, newsletters, invitations, membership forms, newspaper articles, and curricula vitae.

The authors found that the key founders of KAGA included some public administration professors, who advocated public sector accrual accounting via civil society groups immediately after Korea applied to the International Monetary Fund for bailout loans and a new government was formed in 1997/1998. In conjunction with public servants, they defined and designed public sector accrual accounting as a measure of public sector reform and as a part of the broader government budget process, rather than as an accounting initiative. They also co-opted accounting professors and CPA-qualified accountants through their personal connections, based on shared educational backgrounds, to represent the association as a public sector accounting experts’ group.

These findings suggest that the study of the accounting profession cannot be restricted to a focus on professional accounting associations and that accounting knowledge can be acquired by non-accountants. Therefore, the authors argue that the relationship between accounting knowledge, institutional forms, and key actors’ strategies is rich and multifaceted.

The adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) in particular the Cash Basis IPSAS has now become a priority for the World Bank and other donors in less developed countries (LDCs). The paper explores the dissemination and implementation of the Cash Basis IPSAS in Nepal, a less developed country which is considered as one of the front-runners in terms of embracing the Cash Basis IPSAS.

The paper draws on diffusion theory to explain the internal and external factors related to the adoption and implementation of the Cash Basis IPSAS in the Nepali public sector. Data for the paper are derived from document analysis and semi-structured interviews.

The study shows that the adoption and implementation of the Cash Basis IPSAS in Nepal has become more of rhetoric than reality. Claims that the Cash Basis IPSAS is gaining popularity and widespread success across less developed countries are therefore contentious.

The case of Nepalese central government may not be adequate to generalise the adoption of the cash basis IPSAS in all less developed countries. Nonetheless, the study provides an overview of on-going public sector accounting reforms in less developed countries.

The paper emphasises the need for the identification of good accounting practices for less developed countries rather than forcing them into symbolic acceptance of the Cash Basis IPSAS. An example of such a good practice can be the promotion of certain aspects of modified cash accounting.

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of ethical ideological orientation (moral idealism and moral relativism), work sector and types of professional membership on the ethical decision-making (EDM) process of professional accountants in Nigeria.

The study obtained primary data from 329 professional accountants with the aid of a structured questionnaire containing four scenarios of ethical dilemmas. The data were analysed using descriptive statistical analysis, independent sample t-test, Pearson correlation analysis and multiple regression techniques.

The results revealed both idealistic and relativistic moral orientation among the accountants surveyed with a higher mean score (>4.0) recorded for moral idealism. Moral idealism was found to have a positive influence, while moral relativism a negative influence on the three stages (ethical recognition, ethical judgement and ethical intention) of EDM examined. Professional accountants with idealistic orientation showed a higher disposition towards making ethical decisions in situations involving ethical dilemmas than those tending towards relativistic orientation. The results also revealed that work sector (private or public) and types of professional membership play significant roles in predicting the EDM process of professional accountants in Nigeria.

The study provides empirical evidence that could be used to support educational and legislative efforts in enhancing the moral ideological orientation of professional accountants, which will, in turn, enhance their EDM processes. The findings could be used to enhance ethics instructions and training of current and prospective professional accountants in educational settings, especially in countries such as Nigeria where there is yet to be a discrete ethics course in the curriculum for accounting undergraduate degree programmes. Professional accounting bodies in Nigeria and other developing countries could use the evidence in this study to strengthen the ethics code for professional accountants.

The study is unique in focussing on professional accountants in developing countries using Nigeria to represent developing countries with high corruption profile and weak institutions and governments and, as such, it contributes to the scarce research output on accounting ethics in developing countries.

With an increased focus on the need for higher levels of accountability and transparency in the public sector, this study aims to provide insights into non-financial reporting (NFR) practices as a mechanism in facilitating accountability. This study also aims to investigate the changing role of the public sector accountant in this process, specifically focusing on the Australian local government sector.

The authors used a mail survey across two time periods, 2009 and 2017, to analyse the role of accountants in NFR practices. Institutional theory provides a theoretical framing for the study.

The findings reveal an increase in the use of accountants across time in the preparation of voluntary information, being used in a variety of roles because of their financial abilities and analytical skills. The results also indicate a shift has occurred with more emphasis being placed on cross-departmental approaches to NFP incorporating the accountant. These results suggest a greater recognition of the role of accountants in NFR and a dilution of accountant’s boundaries in relation to their existing traditional focus.

This study contributes to the academic NFR literature by providing evidence of an institutional shift that is occurring with the accountant’s role widening to a broader context beyond their traditional roles.

This longitudinal study provides practical evidence to management of the potential offered by accountants as the public sector seeks to achieve higher levels of accountability and transparency. Policy implications also arise in relation to the need for development of quality assurance guidelines and further education and training as the public sector embarks on the journey of NFR.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first that has explored the evolution of NFR over a period of time through its focus on the role of accountants.

The objective of this study is to examine the perceived usefulness of accrual accounting-based financial information for accountability and for supporting decision-making in public sector organisations.

A questionnaire survey adapted from Kober et al. (2010) was used to survey Malaysian Federal Government accountants to ascertain their views on the usefulness of accrual accounting information across 12 situations regarding accountability and decision-making. Mean scores and mean score ranking were computed on a total of 165 usable responses received. The independent t-test was conducted to investigate the differences in the perception between “accountants with” and the “accountants without” prior work experience in the private sector.

The study provides evidence that Malaysian Federal Government accountants consider accrual accounting information as very useful for decision-making. The three most important decision-usefulness indicators in the survey are “To assist in managing the department’s assets and liabilities”, “To assess cash flow needs of a department” and “For departmental resource allocation decisions”. The least useful accrual accounting information as perceived by the Malaysian public sector accountants is “To assist in discharging the department’s accountability obligations”.

The study provides valuable insights into the extent to which accrual accounting information is considered useful for accountability and decision-making, lending support to the Malaysian Government’s reform agenda of moving towards using accrual accounting in public sector organisations at the federal level.

This paper aims to focus on the local government accountants’ perspective towards their current and potential role in the sustainability reporting process and to explore potential factors influencing the further development of their role.

A mail survey approach was adopted across local government organisations with a deeper analysis provided through semi-structured interviews.

Findings indicate that accountants are supportive of involvement in sustainability reporting, but their actual level differs significantly from the level of involvement they believe they should have, pointing to the existence of an execution gap. Potential factors are investigated, highlighting the limited integration of sustainability beyond the organisational level, the lack of understanding of sustainability by accountants and the current need for further up-skilling by accountants.

The study enhances understanding of the accountant’s perception towards sustainability reporting practices within the public sector, with particular focus on local government.

This is an exploratory study examining an area of accounting in local government in which there are few others. It seeks to contribute to the literature by exploring and examining the accountant’s perception towards sustainable development and their current and future prospects in the reporting process in the local government sector in Australia.

This study aims to investigate the extent of influence of learning factors on tacit knowledge sharing among the public sector accountants.

A model comprising six learning factors and their conjectured relationships with tacit knowledge sharing was derived from literature review. A self-administered questionnaire was developed and used to collect data from 203 accountants employed by the Accountant-General's Department (AGD) in Malaysia. Factor analysis was employed to confirm the model's validity, after which the hypotheses formulated were tested using multiple regression analysis.

Learning factors such as training and learning opportunities have strong impact on tacit knowledge sharing, while feedback on performance evaluation, and information and communications technology (ICT) know-how and skills have moderate impact. Job rotation does not show any significant impact on tacit knowledge sharing.

This paper contributes to the development of a replicable model for assessing the extent of influence of learning factors on tacit knowledge sharing, particularly in a public sector organization which has an agenda to adopt KM. However, generalizability could be an issue since this research was conducted on one public organization only. Further, the analysis was based solely on accountants' views.

As a knowledge node of public sector accounting knowledge and practice, the results suggest that the AGD should focus on the significant learning factors in order to leverage its accountants' tacit knowledge. This could facilitate the initial efforts of the AGD's KM implementation in terms of maintaining and growing its knowledge assets for better organizational performance.

This study filled the gap in mainstream literature by providing information on KM implementation in a public sector accounting organization.

This study describes the history and present conditions of the accounting profession in Japan. In particular, the crises of the 1990s have highlighted the fact that Japanese CPAs operate under quite different institutional arrangements from their Anglo‐American counterparts. In addition, there are no equivalent Japanese bodies to the British Chartered Public Finance Accountants and Chartered Management Accountants for public sector or management accountants. This paper identifies factors behind such differences. We discuss three points at issue: currently existing problems with auditing in the private sector, the long absence of external auditors in the public sector and the reason why the accounting profession has not been formed in a management accounting field. Finally, we point out issues involving the Japanese accounting profession that might be tackled in the future.