Purpose – The purpose of this research is to investigate the role and importance of the annual report as a source of information about public sector entities. Design/methodology/approach – This research uses a survey methodology to access users of public sector annual reports and is...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to determine the appropriateness of a general‐purpose financial reporting model derived from a “decision‐useful” framework for government departments. Design/methodology/approach – This research in this paper uses a survey methodology to access...

Governments in Australia are in the process of implementing accrual reporting for their departments and governments as a whole. The central issue of this paper is to provide an explanation as to how general purpose financial reporting became a significant issue for governments in Australia....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to strengthen the theoretical understanding of the processes through which a new regulator seeks to gain legitimacy within an existing regulatory space. The authors do this by investigating the case of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profit...

Probity audits, real time audits which review compliance with process and conformance with guidelines, are gaining popularity in the Australian public sector. Prior research has noted that the conduct of probity audits by auditors‐general may pose problems for their independence. This paper...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine charity regulatory systems, including accounting standard setting, across five jurisdictions in varying stages of adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards, and identifies the challenges of this process....

Purpose – Change in the New Zealand state education system during the 1980s brought about a transfer of responsibility for school financial management from the centre to the school level. The purpose of this paper is to report an investigation of how aspects of this devolved responsibility...

Purpose This paper aims to understand the potential usefulness of sell-side analysts’ investment recommendation reports as a medium for communicating intellectual capital (IC) information. It explores the manner in which analyst reports supply IC information and the types of companies in...

In this decade we have witnessed in the Australian public sector tremendous pressures for change in the name of accountability and efficiency. Changes have occurred in public sector management and in public sector accounting. Techniques such as programme budgeting, financial management...

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to review the use of content analysis as a research method in understanding social and environmental accounting (SEA) and to examine current contemporary foci of this research tradition. Further, seeks to examine several research method issues relating to the...