Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to debate the future form of reporting in the public sector by examining alternative forms of reporting, and more specifically the frameworks of integrated reporting and popular reporting. Moreover, the paper explores whether and how these reports could be related to each other in order for the needs of a pillar user group, that of the citizens, to be addressed. Design/methodology/approach – The authors analyze the frameworks of integrated reporting and popular reporting, and by combining their characteristics the authors propose a creative synthesis suitable for the public sector. Findings – The analysis leads to the conclusion that governmental entities need to take the next step on reporting in two parallel levels: the first would require the publication of information encountered in integrated reports containing various information elements that are not confronted to the traditional financial ones. The second would result in the provision of this information in a concise and easily comprehensive way. The merger of these two streams will give rise to the publication of “Integrated Popular Reports – IPR.” Originality/value – This move would result to useful and meaningful reporting with potential strategic advantages. The integrated reporting dimension of the reports combined to the popular reporting dimension would provide an adequate information matrix for citizens and other user groups (e.g. politicians, public executives), that are interested to understand the “whole picture” of public sector entities but at the same time they neither possess advanced accounting knowledge nor they are familiar with technical terminology.

PurposeDespite the great interest in activity based costing (ABC), companies seem to be reluctant to adopt it. Our research aims at examining the rate of adoption of ABC by Greek companies that belong to all three sectors of the Greek economy, i.e. manufacturing, retail and services, as well as investigating the reasons that influence a firm's decision to change its current cost accounting system.Design/methodology/approachAn empirical survey via questionnaires was conducted during 2003 on a sample of 88 Greek leading companies and four company categories were identified in respect to their perceptions towards ABC (ABC adopters, ABC supporters, ABC deniers and ABC unawares).FindingsOur findings indicate that ABC diffusion in Greece is quite satisfactory. Furthermore, we present evidence that firms that have implemented ABC (ABC adopters) have experienced multidimensional management facilitating benefits from the system. However, the adequacy of resources was found to be the variable that is positively and statistically correlated with the majority of problems encountered during ABC implementation process. On the other hand, the companies that include ABC in their future plans (ABC supporters) seem to be familiar with the corresponding expected benefits and potential problems of its adoption. We present evidence that the possibility of future ABC adoption is related to the degree of satisfaction from the currently used cost accounting system. Companies that do not intend to adopt ABC (ABC deniers) were found to be more satisfied with their existing cost accounting system in comparison to ABC supporters. We also report the characteristics of companies that still have complete ignorance of the ABC technique (ABC unawares).Originality/valueThe paper not only proceeds in a thorough analysis of the benefits perceived in relation to ABC as they have been presented in similar research, but also moves a step further and groups these benefits into distinct categories as well as ranks them in order of perceived importance. Furthermore, it analyzes the basic characteristics of the firms that have complete ignorance of ABC (ABC unawares), a group that is rarely met in ABC research papers.

The use of financial ratios is a widespread method for assessing the financial performance of private sector companies. However, the application of an analogous exercise in the public sector is a less straightforward one. In the later case it is a multifaceted task that involves judgments about the interplay of complex social, organizational and financial factors. In this paper we use accrual end of the year financial statements data of Greek Municipalities for the period 2002–2004 to compute nine commonly used performance assessment financial ratios. We find corroborative evidence that factors, which are exogenous to the municipalities’ control, such as their wealth and size, have statistically significant impact on ratio values. Thus, as financial ratios are significantly influenced by socio‐economic factors like municipal wealth and size, cross sectional comparisons on the basis of these ratios should be made with caution and performed for municipalities that exhibit similarities in terms of size and wealth.

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A broad debate about the harmonization of public sector accounting standards in Europe is underway. The authors provide arguments in favour of harmonization, but they also acknowledge the existing pluralism and diversity by taking stock of the state of play in 14 European countries. The paper makes a proposal for a way forward for policy-makers and standard-setters, in which the benefits of harmonization can be obtained without obliging EU member countries to necessarily abandon their current public sector accounting systems