Intellectual heritages of post-1990 public sector accounting research: an exploration

Abstract

<jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Purpose</jats:title><jats:p>The article's aim is to refine prospects for theorising in public sector accounting (PSA) research in order to capture the methodological benefits promised by its multi-disciplinarity.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title><jats:p>The study primarily employs a bibliometric analysis of research outputs invoking New Public Management (NPM). Applying a content analysis to Hood (1991), as the most cited NPM source, bibliographic methods and citation/co-citation analysis for the period 1991 to 2018 are mobilised to identify the disciplinary evolution of the NPM knowledge base from a structural and longitudinal perspective.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Findings</jats:title><jats:p>The analysis exhibits disciplinary branching of NPM over time and its imprints on post-1990 PSA research. Given the discourse about origins of NPM-based accounting research, there are research domains behind the obvious that indicate disciplinary fragmentations. For instance, novelty of PSA research is found in public value accounting, continuity is evidenced by transcending contextual antecedents. Interestingly, these domains are loosely coupled. Exploring the role of disciplinary imprints designates prospects for post-NPM PSA research that acknowledges multi-disciplinarity and branching in order to deploy insularity as a building block for its inquiries.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Research limitations/implications</jats:title><jats:p>Criteria for assessing the limitations and credibility of an explorative inquiry are used, especially on how the proposal to develop cumulative knowledge from post-1990 PSA research can be further developed.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Practical implications</jats:title><jats:p>A matrix suggesting a method of ordering disciplinary references enables positioning of research inquiries within PSA research.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Originality/value</jats:title><jats:p>By extending common taxonomies of PSA intellectual heritages, the study proposes the ‘inquiry-heritage’ matrix as a typology that displays patterns of theorisation for positioning an inquiry within PSA disciplinary groundings.</jats:p></jats:sec>

Earnings management in state-owned enterprises: bringing publicness back in

“…This suggestion is particularly relevant during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, as there is a growing call for an increased role of public administrations in the economy, especially through the ownership of organisations that are considered relevant for social and economic recovery. As such, by exploring the implications of accounting behaviours on policymakers, politicians’ decision-making, and on the democratic values and accountability relationships, this paper also represents an attempt to emancipate public sector accounting scholarship (Bruns et al, 2020 ; Steccolini, 2019 ).…”

“…Most of the literature seems to have neglected some specific features of the public domain to which SOEs belong, which are related essentially to the public interest they directly or indirectly pursue even if operating as private law-ruled organisations. In the awareness that the public interest is attained in increasingly abstract arenas, public sector accounting scholars are beginning to exit their niche and to engage in interdisciplinary research (Bruns et al, 2020 ; Jacobs, 2016 ), to the benefit of more generalisable understandings of public sector accounting and its social relevance. In this regard, Steccolini ( 2019 ) suggests shifting the focus from the public sector as a context of research—as opposed to the private one—to the publicness concept to pursue such an ambitious goal.…”

“…Therefore, extending the exploration of EM in SOEs to publicness dimensions contributes toward illuminating and explaining the impact of political authority on the quality of SOEs’ accountability for the use of public resources. In particular, this work is a valuable contribution to the accounting literature on EM in SOEs, which has so far mostly neglected the explanatory potential of concepts related to the pursuing of the public interest, such as publicness (Bruns et al, 2020 ; Steccolini, 2019 ). In bringing publicness back into accounting research and building on interdisciplinary discussions for the investigation of accounting phenomena, a further theoretical contribution stems from this work’s positioning at the conjunction of accounting and public administration literature.…”

From little seeds to a big tree: a far-reaching assessment of the integrated reporting stream

“…The methods applied in this research paper are based on previous studies that have conducted similar analyses, mainly using bibliometric techniques, e.g., Ikeziri et al (2019), Zhong et al (2016), Uysal (2010), andMoya &Prior (2008). By applying a structural and longitudinal perspective, conducting a bibliometric analysis may facilitate the assessment (Bruns et al, 2020) of the IR research stream. Besides, bibliometric analysis makes recognition of the main authors, sources of publication, and areas of study for a given subject possible, and the use of bibliometric tools allows the creation of network maps and the identification of clusters based on scientific research, publication sources, or the most influential keywords (Ikeziri et al, 2019).…”

“…Thus, the need for a bibliometric analysis is reinforced since that would allow the research carried out so far to be assessed, and the main authors, sources of publication, and areas of study for a given subject to be acknowledged. (Bruns et al, 2020).…”