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The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent of central government financial information disclosed in accordance with accrual-based International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) and to investigate the environmental factors affecting this level, drawing on the contingency theory framework.

This study uses a self-constructed checklist of 116 items to measure the IPSAS disclosure level by 100 public sector entities from different countries across the globe during the period 2015–2017. Panel regressions have been used.

The results show significant differences in compliance levels with IPSAS disclosures across nations. They reveal a positive influence of the degree of government openness (political culture), quality of public administration and management and prior experience with International Accounting Standards (IAS)/International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in the public sector on this level, whereas government financial condition is a nonsignificant factor.

The research findings are potentially relevant to academics, researchers, practitioners, standard-setters and government policymakers. By examining the influencing factors of IPSAS disclosure level, this paper paves the way for further investigation of this topic with a more extensive set of micro and macroeconomic variables whether at the central or local government level in other jurisdictions

This study provides new insights into the assessment of the transparency and completeness of government accrual-based financial statements. Based on the contingency theory, this paper is the first to empirically investigate the factors affecting the level of disclosure under accrual-based IPSAS by central government entities in a cross-country analysis.

This paper investigates to what extent public sector entities (PSEs) in developing countries (DCs) are compliant with IPSAS and examines the impact of the socioeconomic and politico-administrative environment on this compliance during the period 2015–2018.

This research develops a self-constructed checklist consisting of 116 disclosure items from five accrual-based IPSAS (IPSASs, 1, 2, 3, 14 and 24) and applies panel regressions for a sample of 500 entity-year observations of 125 PSEs.

The study results show a high level of disparity in the degree of compliance with IPSAS amongst DCs' governments, with an overall average level of 61%. They reveal that compliance with IPSAS is positively influenced by the level of citizen wealth, government political culture (degree of government openness) and the quality of public administration, whereas jurisdiction size, government financial condition and political competition are non-significant factors.

This research provides researchers and practitioners with a comprehensive framework for understanding the extent of New Public Management reforms in DCs with a focus on International Public Sector Accounting Standards implementation. It might assist policymakers in their accounting strategies and might be a signal for DCs with low compliance to tap lessons from governments with successful experience of IPSAS adoption.

Focusing on DCs' context, this paper brings new insights into the analysis of socioeconomic and politico-administrative incentives for government compliance with IPSAS. It is the first to investigate the impact of citizen wealth and political competition on IPSAS disclosures.

In recent years accounting standard setters and professional bodies have issued directives aimed at improving the transparency and accessibility of financial reports compiled by government agencies. This study examines the availability and accessibility of local government financial reports on the Internet for a sample of 300 U.S. municipalities of varying size. Results indicate that provision of financial reports is more prominent among larger cities. Cities with higher income per capita and higher levels of accounting disclosure are also more likely to provide financial reports on the Internet. The accessibility of the financial data reported on the Internet is positively related to the number of residents, resident income per capita, and level of debt and financial position of the municipality.

This paper focuses on the extent to which Swedish municipalities identified and communicated risks due to the COVID-19 outbreak early on. The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent the situational factors of the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the likelihood of municipalities disclosing COVID-19 information as a subsequent event in the annual reports of 2019.

Logistic regression models were used to estimate COVID-19 disclosure as a subsequent event. Data were handpicked from annual reports, audit reports and meeting minutes, or were retrieved from publicly available sources.

Regression results indicate that municipalities issuing their annual report in a later stage of the pandemic, in regions with a higher number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, were more likely to disclose COVID-19 information as a subsequent event. However, the municipal factors used to capture the risk of a severe impact of the COVID-19 outbreak were not of major importance. In line with previous research, this study shows that political and institutional factors have explanatory power in predicting and explaining accounting disclosure choices.

This paper contributes to research on accounting disclosures in urgent crises and on the specific topic of subsequent events in the public sector. Few studies address subsequent events in a corporate setting and, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, none do so in the context of the public sector. This paper also offers insight into how explanatory factors, previously tested under normal conditions and circumstances, influence disclosure choices in an early stage of a health crisis characterized by uncertainty regarding both occurrence and consequences.

Annual reports are perceived to be important sources of information about government departments' performance, accountability, efficiency and effectiveness. This paper aims to report on an empirical study that explores the current disclosure practices by Australian government departments.

To achieve the research aim, the paper assesses the 2005‐2006 annual reports of 56 Australia Government departments. It analyses 47 mandatory disclosures and 20 voluntary disclosures reported by the subject organizations. It employs a disclosure index to calculate the level of disclosures.

The findings reveal that the voluntary disclosure level is higher than the mandatory disclosure in the subject departments. Further, it is found that the annual reports of government departments reveal a low level of disclosures in the areas of human resources, asset management, external scrutiny, purchasing, and contracting.

The study is based on published annual reports only. Therefore, it provides little in‐depth insights into the current disclosure practice within the subject organizations.

The findings reported in this paper will be of value to both theoretical and empirical studies of how organizational and institutional forces may affect the level of disclosure in the annual reports of public sector organizations. The study will provide basis for further research into this area in various international settings. Practically, this study will assist government departmental management to continue improving their quality of reporting.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the highly cited articles published in Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (AAAJ), since its inception, to answer three research questions: first, how have scholarly articles published in AAAJ developed? second, what are the focus areas and characteristics of articles in AAAJ, and who are the influential authors? third, who are the emerging next generation scholars and what are the emerging research themes in AAAJ?

A structured literature review (SLR) was used to analyse 126 most cited classic AAAJ articles and 21 additional emerging articles published between 1988 and 2016. Traditional literature reviews can have varied results because of a lack of rigour. The SLR method allows for an examination in detail of the articles, authors, focus areas and pattern of AAAJ publishing over three decades.

The findings show increased diversity in more recent years in theories, methods, origins, focus areas, and where AAAJ articles are cited, which highlights that the interdisciplinary accounting research project is maturing and remaining true to the ideal of being inclusive.

Within this diversity, the analyses show that AAAJ remains focussed on and presents opportunities for impactful accounting research related to social issues, including non-financial corporate reporting/disclosure, public sector accounting, corporate governance and alternative forms of accounting, audit and accountability. Additionally, there is a need for more practice-based research to address the “wicked” problems at the intersection between accounting and society.

This paper presents accounting researchers with an opportunity to develop insightful and publishable studies. Also, it serves as a basis for developing future research agendas in the interdisciplinary accounting field.

This paper aims to introduce the special issue on “sustainability and accounting for non-financial matters: qualitative and quantitative research approaches”. This special issue was organised at the time when the entire globe was affected by the Coronavirus and accordingly, this paper has taken this opportunity to discuss the implications of this pandemic on accounting for non-financial issues, especially in relation to sustainability accounting research and practice.

An analysis of public documents and limited academic research on the Coronavirus was undertaken in this paper to highlight how life as it existed has fundamentally changed. The authors also review the papers published in this special issue and identifies research opportunities arising from the current environment.

The onslaught of the Coronavirus provides both challenges and opportunities for the practice of, and research into, accounting for non-financial matters, such as sustainability. The papers published in this special issue promote understanding and linking of sustainability reporting practices, to creating firm values, as well as identifying current and emerging challenges. The special issue explores criteria for the construction of accounting technology that is consistent with agnostic-based critical accounting and accountability, a business case for managers and practitioners to formulate strategic and management control systems in response to climate change issues, legitimacy and the use of photographs in sustainability reporting to create value, effective disclosures of business and sustainability ethics practiced by the firm for reputation building and value creation, indigenous accounting in mining companies, public sector policy framing of non-financial value, the barriers to sustainability reporting because of lack of awareness and knowledge and inadequate regulatory support in developing countries and the significance of sustainability accounting education to improve sustainability reporting practices in developing countries.

Future research opportunities in relation to the impact of the Coronavirus on accounting for non-financial value are identified. Given that COVID-19 is a societal matter, the practical implications of the Coronavirus in accounting for non-financial value creation are highlighted. The Coronavirus has challenged the existing economic paradigm and non-financial issues will capture the attention of corporations, other institutions, civil society and governments.

The Coronavirus has challenged the existing economic paradigm and non-financial issues will capture the attention of corporations, other institutions, civil society and governments.

Given that COVID-19 is a societal matter, the practical implications of the Coronavirus in accounting for non-financial value creation are highlighted.

This study, to the knowledge, is one of the pioneer academic studies that has explored the implications of the Coronavirus on accounting for non-financial value. In addition, this special issue includes papers that highlight how non-financial reporting matters are increasingly being given attention by companies to enhance business practices on sustainability through different perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to provide the first assessment of the integrated reporting (IR) stream using a broad sample of publications separated into research scopes (accounting and non-core accounting journals) and using a longitudinal perspective. This study proposes to identify its main contributors, evidencing both individual and collaborative work.

Bibliometric tools supported by a milestone approach to IR history were used to address the first two research questions on the growth of this stream per scope. Density maps on keyword co-occurrence provided insights into the third question aimed at assessing differences in the scopes’ research topics. The number of publications, citation-based metrics and network analysis based on co-authorship allowed us to answer the last question regarding the top contributors.

The results endorse the acknowledged interest in this stream, exposing its incredible growth, which already amounts to over 1,000 different scholars, 200 distinguished journals and 7,600 citations across 540 peer-reviewed publications. With the accounting scope leading on citation frequency and the non-core accounting having more publications, an almost picture-perfect circle in a pooled density map supports the field’s advocated interdisciplinarity with its distinctive contributions. Finally, the cluster analysis revealed that 140 publications belong exclusively to 10 research clusters that contribute to more than half of the total citation count.

This rich analysis combines visualizing techniques with in-depth bibliometrics to provide the first far-reaching collation of publications on IR to offer a complementary view on this dynamic interdisciplinary stream.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the transparency and completeness of government financial reporting in sub-Saharan African countries by assessing the extent of compliance with IPSAS disclosures and to investigate the impact of the strength of public management systems (SPMS) and accounting education on this level.

This research develops a self-constructed disclosure index from content analysis and applies panel regressions for a sample of 60 sub-Saharan African government entities during the period 2014–2017.

The study results indicate that IPSAS disclosure levels significantly vary across sub-Saharan African governments. They reveal a positive effect of the SPMS and accounting education on the extent of compliance with IPSAS in this region.

The study findings are of interest to practitioners, researchers, government policy makers, supervisory authorities and professional bodies. By focusing on the effect of the SPMS and accounting education on IPSAS disclosure level, this paper leaves room for future research to investigate other relevant factors associated with the compliance with these standards whether in sub-Saharan Africa or in other parts of the world.

This paper gives new insights into the assessment of the quality and transparency of government financial reporting in sub-Saharan Africa by examining the extent of compliance with IPSAS in this region. It is the first to investigate the impact of the SPMS and accounting education on this level.

Municipalities have the potential to become models of the circular economy (CE). This paper aims to examine the impact of the municipal council’s characteristics on municipal CE disclosure and promotion.

This paper is based on the resource dependence and upper echelons theories. For a sample of the 100 largest cities in Canada, a mixed methodology is used to code and analyze data and test the hypotheses.

Municipal councillors’ education and experience related to the environment or sustainability are both likely to affect CE disclosure, and their sector membership (public or private) moderates the relationship between CE disclosure and councillors’ experience. This experience may be reinforced by membership in the private sector, which has applied CE principles more extensively than the public sector has. Municipal councils with a greater number of councillors from the private sector appear to perform better in matters of transparency and to disclose more CE information on their public websites.

Municipalities could use the findings to foster their transition to CE by implementing a CE-related training plan for their councillors. A CE-dedicated section on their websites could improve transparency and inform and educate residents about CE.

The public sector could learn from the private sector’s best practices regarding CE.

This paper contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence of the transparency and engagement of municipalities toward CE. The authors extend the resource dependence and upper echelons theories to a new context, that of public organizations.