Twelve Decades of Public Sector Accounting Research: A Bibliometric Review

Abstract

Public sector accounting is crucial in establishing accountability, transparency, and integrity in the Government as it serves as a tool for analysing financial and operational performance. However, the publication on public sector accounting has grown less attractive since they target a narrow audience and are only available in niche accounting domains. Hence, this paper reports the current scientific literature on public sector accounting through a bibliometric analysis by examining general publication trends and the knowledge structure of this field. A bibliometric analysis was performed on 594 published items of literature concerning public sector accounting or government accounting in the Scopus database on 20th February 2022. The data extracted were analysed using the R package "Bibliometrix", Microsoft Excel 2021, Harzing's Publish and Perish, and VOS-viewer. Findings indicated that Western scholars paid attention to public sector accounting research during its formative years, commencing from 1906. Most of the research was done after 2000, and six themes were generated for the conceptual structure in public sector accounting that is "Public Sector", "Public Sector Accounting", "Accounting", "Government Accounting", "Accounting Change" and "Performance". Unfortunately, there were lesser reports on collaborations among researchers from different regions, which implied that there could be fewer social-exchange perspectives across institutions and nations.