Stock-taking is an important accounting process. After 35 years of public sector accounting reforms that touch upon different dimensions of public sector financial management, now is the time to take stock of changes attempted, those that materialized and the innovations therein, and to learn from best practices. But this process is cumbersome and challenging because there has been a plethora of reforms with different outcomes in many, inhomegenous, public sector entities. Their reform journeys had different starting points and did not follow the same compass.
In order to frame our discussion, we need an operational definition of public sector accounting innovation. While there are definitions of innovation that could correspond both to public administration (Albury 2005; Hartley 2014) and public sector financial management (Lüder, 1994), ‘innovation’ remains an umbrella term (Caperchione, 2016). We could, however, agree on the premise that innovations in public sector accounting are about increasing efficiency by not just changing the processes but also people's mindsets and improving the comprehensiveness, reliability and meaningfulness of accounting information for better decision-making, accountability and control. Under this broad definition, many reforms which have occurred in public sector financial management could find their place in the picture.
This PMM mini theme focuses on public sector financial and management accounting innovations and tries to shed some light on whether these innovations have eventually improved public financial management. Our research question is very broad and can encapsulate multiple prisms of analysis.