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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the merits of accrual-based accounting for the public in an Indonesian local government. It gives insights into the connection between the new practices and responses from government apparatus.

The paper applies genetic structuralism from Pierre Bourdieu to study the interrelation of habitus, field and capital in the accrual accounting implementation.

The result indicates a symbolic dominance of central government in the implementation of accrual-based accounting in the local government. Accrual accounting is considered to be a technique of government accountability which is independent from political and social situation.

The accrual accounting implementation preoccupies the government officials in their study of the preparation of financial statements while its utilization to increase the public welfare is still ignored.

The government still prioritizes accountability and transparency for managerial and political purposes. Hence, the public interest is less superior compared with the formalities established between governments – the central government and local governments – and the regional legislator.

This paper contributes to the evaluation of the alignment of government policy with the public interest.

In a state capitalist country such as China, an important influence on company reporting is the government, which can influence company decision-making. The nature and impact of how the Chinese government uses its symbolic power to promote corporate environmental reporting (CER) have been under-studied, and therefore, this paper aims to address this gap in the literature by investigating the various strategies the Chinese government uses to influence CER and how political ideology plays a key role.

This study uses discourse analysis to examine the annual reports and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports from seven Chinese companies between 2007 and 2011. And the data analysis presented is informed by Bourdieu's conceptualisation of symbolic power.

The Chinese government, through exercising the symbolic power, manages to build consensus, so that the Chinese government's political ideology becomes the habitus which is deeply embedded in the companies' perception of practices. In China, the government dominates the field and owns the economic capital. In order to accumulate symbolic capital, companies must adhere to political ideology, which helps them maintain and improve their social position and ultimately reward them with more economic capital. The findings show that the CER provided by Chinese companies is a symbolic product of this process.

The paper provides contributions around the themes of symbolic power wielded by the government that influence not only state-owned enterprises (SOEs) but also firms in the private sector. This paper also provides an important contribution to understanding, in the context of a strong ideologically based political system (such as China), how political ideology influences companies' decision-making in the field of CER.