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In Australia, the public sector represents a significant component of the Australian economy and is a major employer across all states and territories. A constant stream of public sector management reforms has occurred over the last decade. These reforms include accrual accounting and budgeting, whole of government reporting, privatisation and contracting out to name a few. This would suggest that accounting graduates applying for positions at government agencies would benefit from some knowledge of these significant reforms. This paper aims to examine the perceptions of accounting academics as to barriers to public sector accounting (PSA) education in Australia and identify strategies for making the accounting curriculum more public sector inclusive.

Two data collection methods were employed in order to attain a comprehensive picture of the state of PSA education in Australia. Telephone interviews were undertaken with accounting academics across a carefully selected range of universities. This selection ensured representation across the core accounting units to gain an indication of the extent of public sector coverage in the core accounting subjects. In‐depth face‐to‐face interviews were then conducted at five universities across five states of Australia to probe further issues that emanated from the telephone interviews.

The findings suggest that in general, there is very limited teaching of PSA in Australian universities' accounting degree programs. Of the universities studied where issues regarding the public sector are emphasised, this is mainly due to a few academics who have a research interest in the public sector and so extend this interest into their teaching and the curriculum.

There are a number of strategies identified to achieve greater coverage of PSA in the curriculum. However, the findings suggest that unless the professional accounting bodies require PSA to be included in courses as part of the accreditation process, then it will be difficult to achieve significant improvement in the nature and extent of public sector exposure. Most interviewees argued that a key factor in increasing public sector coverage would be ensuring that the textbook writers for the core accounting units included more PSA examples.

The public sector in general, and PSA education is a neglected area of research. This study is significant as it highlights that although major public sector reforms have occurred in Australia and worldwide, this has had little impact on the accounting curriculum taught to students.

The Australian higher education sector faces severe risks from the consequences of COVID-19. This paper aims to explore these risks, their immediate impacts and the likely future impacts. The authors specifically focus on the institutional financial and social risks arising from the global pandemic.

The authors collect data using the 2019 annual reports of the 37 Australian public universities and relevant media contributions. The findings of identified sector change are interpreted through Laughlin’s organisational change diagnosis.

The sector confronts significant financial and social risks because of its over-reliance on income from fee-paying onshore overseas students resulting in universities primarily undertaking morphostatic changes. These risks include job losses, changing employment conditions, mental health issues for students, scholars, other staff, including casual staff, online learning shortfalls and the student expectations of their university experience. The study reveals how many of these risks are the inevitable consequence of the “accountingisation” of Australian public universities.

Despite material exposure, the universities provide only limited disclosure of the extent of the risks associated with increasing dependence on overseas student fees to 31 December 2019. The analysis highlights fake accountability and distorted transparency to users of audited financial statements – a major limitation of university annual reports.

Research on the Australian higher education sector has mainly focussed on the impact of policies and changes. The public disclosure of critical risks taken by these universities are now addressed.

The purpose of this study is to understand the efforts of key social actors in influencing the reform of Iranian public universities budgeting system, from incremental to performance-based budgeting (PBB), the tensions that arose as competing efforts of institutional change were undertaken, and ultimately the impact of these efforts on the extent to which the Iranian government transitioned to a system of PBB in public universities.

Data comprises of semi-structured interviews with managers and experts involved in the budget setting process and an analysis of budgetary policy documents, reports and archival material such as legislation. An institutional work lens is employed to interpret the findings.

While actors advocating the change were engaged in institutional work directed at disrupting the old budgetary rules by disassociating the rules moral foundations and creating new budgetary rules (through new legislation), universities undertook subtle resistance by engaging in extended evaluation of the new proposed PBB rules thereby maintaining the old budgetary rules. The reforms undertaken to introduce PBB in Iranian universities achieved minimal success whereby incremental budgeting continued to constitute by far a larger percentage of the budget allocation formula for university budgets. This finding illustrates change and continuity in university budgetary systems resulting from institutional work of actors competing to control the basis of resource allocation under the proposed PBB system by proposing contradicting models.

The findings highlight the importance of understanding the interplay of institutional work undertaken by competing social actors as they seek to advance their goals in shaping budgetary reforms in the public-sector. Such an understanding may inform policy makers who intend to introduce major reforms in public-sector budgeting approaches.

Unlike prior studies that largely focused on how organization-level budgeting practices responded to changes in public budgeting rules (i.e. at the site of implementation of the rules), this paper highlights how strategies of change and resistance are played out at the site of setting budgetary norms.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the transition of the accounting systems from cash based to accrual based, in Thai public universities. The focus is on the factors both influencing and affecting the accounting change.

This study takes a quantitative approach with data collected through a mail survey to the Chief Financial Officer of each of the 78 Thai public universities. Statistical analysis included both descriptive analysis and ANOVA to analyse differences between universities.

The main catalysts for change have come from both external and internal sources. The Thai government requires public agencies to adapt their accounting practices in line with New Public Management (NPM) and university management need improved information for planning and control purposes. The most important change has been to the financial accounting system with the adoption of computerised accrual accounting practices. The major factor influencing the change process is low institutional capacity of some Thai universities which is evidenced by the lack of technological resources and staff with knowledge of private sector accounting practices. Universities that either have or intend to become autonomous have given more importance to accounting system changes; and universities that have achieved more success in the change process note the importance of external consultants, and staff having an understanding and knowledge of data requirements.

This paper adds to the literature on accounting change in the public sector in less developed countries by highlighting factors influencing accounting change and factors that can be barriers to and facilitators of change. The findings provide further evidence of the issues confronted by public agencies in developing countries adopting new accounting practices and highlights the importance of training of local staff before the change process commences. Training is critical for knowledge transfer to enable staff to gain the knowledge and skills needed to assist in the change of accounting practices.

This paper presents a contribution to the government accounting change literature by highlighting public sector agencies in a developing country, Thailand. In both developed and developing countries, public universities are now operating in an environment of decreased government funding coupled with university management taking more responsibility for financial management. This study provides an insight into the changes taking place in Thai public universities in relation to the accounting system to support this new operating environment.

This study aims to focus on the factors influencing project cost at US public universities and compares them to similar projects in the US private sector. It also presents an analysis of the potential reasons for the difference or similarities in the two sectors.

This study utilized an exploratory, comparative case study methodology performed on a small sample of public university projects and two sources of private sector cost data.

The results infer that most of the US public projects have comparable costs to that of their US private sector counterparts. The cost data from the university projects were further examined to explore if there were any possible relationships between the types of delivery methods used, sustainability certifications achieved and two project performance indexes – cost and duration.

A more thorough analysis with a larger dataset is required to make generalizable conclusions. However, the process used in this study does provide a good overview of how facility managers could organize their own cost comparison study to evaluate their project expenditures.

This research provides a starting point for future research into the topic of US public sector project costs when compared to US private sector counterparts and the impact of delivery system and sustainability on cost of US public sector projects.

Research on this topic is scant; as such, this paper provides a starting point for future research and offers insights into the potential impacts of project delivery method and choice of following a sustainability certification option.

Public and private universities keep facilitating knowledge transfer and sharing within academic institutions. Multiple factors have been investigated to strengthen the infrastructure of these universities; however, the researchers have always been trying to explore the best one. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of academic supports on motivation to learn (MTL) and transfer, in turn, influence transfer of training (TOT). Interestingly, the sector (i.e. public or private universities) unveils TOT to see whether the public sector has best practices or private.

This study adopts valid measurement instruments from the literature studies. This study pretests the validity and reliability of the instruments. This study administers the designed survey questionnaire among the faculty members of both public and private universities. This study uses a convenient sampling approach using a quantitative research method. By applying Smart partial least square (PLS) 3.3.3, this study uses structural equation modeling.

This study supports that organization, supervisor and peer support significantly and positively influence TOT. Additionally, MTL and motivation to transfer (MTT) significantly and positively mediate the link between TOT and organizational, supervisor and peer support. MTL also significantly and positively influences MTT. Most interestingly, the sector significantly and positively moderates the link between TOT and organizational, supervisor and peer support, MTL and transfer.

The results support the public and private universities that they should develop the infrastructure containing learning motivation and transfer for easy TOT. This would be more effective if the in higher educational institutions (HEIs) follow research findings.

This study empirically tests the impacts of academic supports on MTL and transfer, which boosts the TOT. The novelty of the research can be implemented in HEIs’ rules and regulations.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the sustainability dimensions reported on the websites of public and private universities in Ghana, an emerging economy.

The universities in Ghana were categorized under public and private universities. The top five under each category were chosen (by Edu Rank’s ratings), and data was gathered from the websites of the sampled universities. Data analysis was conducted using Global Reporting Initiative (GRI-G4) framework and sustainability tools for campus assessment. Findings were then analyzed through stakeholder theory’s lens and organizational characteristics such as ownership, students’ acceptance ratios, performance, size and age.

This study’s results show that the key aspects of sustainability disclosed on the websites of the sampled private and public universities in Ghana are more of economic and campus sustainability assessment indicators than the social and environmental dimensions. Contrary to the popular notion that private sector organizations do more sustainability reporting than those in the public sector, in the case of Ghana, the sampled public universities reported more than the privately owned universities. This study attributes the extent and variations of sustainability reporting among the public and private Ghanaian universities to the universities’ characteristics such as students’ acceptance ratios, performance, size, ownership and age.

The findings from this study indicate that in improving the value of sustainability reporting, stakeholders of the educational sector in emerging economies should encourage universities to adopt the GRI-G4 framework and campus sustainability assessment indicators in disclosing their sustainability initiatives.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first study to compare the extent and variations in sustainability reporting between public and private universities in an emerging economy.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the articles presented in this special issue. The Special Issue is inspired by our recent review of the intellectual capital (IC) literature in Guthrie et al. (2012, p. 74), in which the authors found that the public sector is one of the least addressed areas of IC research.

The paper is based on a literature and published document review, experiential reflections and argument.

The paper reveals that interest in public sector and IC is alive and well and the major difference between public sector and mainstream IC research is a complete lack of normative research. The papers in this Journal of Intellectual Capital (JIC) Special Issue continue that tradition.

The authors call on public sector IC researchers to continue the third stage and fourth stage IC research tradition encouraging them to explore emerging issues alongside the changes in the social, political and economic realities impacting public sector IC in the future. Doing so will ensure that public sector IC research is timely, relevant, impactful and contributes to future practice, research, policy and above all, benefits the citizens who need and consume public services.

The paper presents a précise of current public sector research and encourages public sector researchers to continue developing research into how IC works.

Universally, university is considered as the apex body which is ethically obliged to present a substantial society. In doing so, universities often innovate dynamic business models and theories. Ideally, the countries whose universities contribute for better and sustainable business growth are the advanced one. However, universities themselves should be the business organisation – an argument is yet to receive attention. Although literature lacks in the area of education business especially university provision, the sector behaves as business entity after the inception of private sector. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the paradigm transformation of university sector and its impact on the society.

Given the differentiated nature of research questions, multiple techniques are used to collect the data. However, this research adopts the norms of qualitative methods. Both secondary and primary data are used. While secondary data are collected by University Grants Commission (UGC), primary data are collected through interviews.

Findings show that the development of university sector started following monopoly model. More than half a century, the same model was continued. Thereafter, duopoly model was introduced which carried until the inception of private sector. The growth of private sector followed oligopoly model which was further extended to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). These days, society compares university with “diploma mill”, as production of knowledge and civic society is longer than the part of the core business of university. Consequently, compromising with research is to be judged as a threat to overall development that includes business and social development.

A few studies have been published in the area of private university. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, none covers the oligopoly-ism and SME-ism behaviour of university and its impact on the concept of university and on the society. Therefore, this project aims to understand the norms of university business and its substantial contribution on the social change.

The aim of this paper is to examine how performance management (PM) is adopted in the public university sector and the problems it faces in an environment of conflicting management cultures.

This paper draws on institutional logics as a theoretical framework and inductive qualitative interviews as a research approach.

The results reveal that the conflicting values instilled in key players aligned with the different cultures have resulted in PM assuming a hybrid form, rather than the corporate form. Three identified problematic factors further demonstrate that the level of hybridity varies across the sector. The paper alludes to a theory-practice gap as a result of the findings and the concept of negative hybridity and its risk to effective governance aligned with the corporate approach.

The results are limited to Australian public universities. In addition, interviews were conducted with a specific set of university management staff. A different perspective on the findings may have been generated with a different set of management or operational staff.

The results provide policymakers and university management with information on the theory practice gap and the problematic factors contributing to it. It also informs policymakers to the risks associated with negative hybridity.

The results reveal the existence of a theory–practice gap because of a number of common problematic factors in the adoption of a corporate-oriented PM system in Australian public universities. The results highlight the need for further studies to establish the extent to which the current hybrid PM system deviates from the expected corporate-oriented PM system, and whether this poses a risk to effective governance aligned with the corporate approach.