Reflections on public sector accrual accounting and reporting: a post-operative transplant view

Purpose This paper aims to identify thematic issues in public sector accrual accounting and financial reporting that learn from the past and provide lessons for the future by reflecting on the warnings in Olson et al .’s seminal 1998 book Global Warning. Design/methodology/approach Methodologically, this paper takes insights developed by an experienced pool of public sector accounting scholars and refines them via frames of thinking such as accountability, democracy, decision-making and governance. The discussion follows a medical analogy of an organ transplant in which the public sector was diagnosed as an ailing patient and a for-profit accounting system (business accrual accounting and reporting) has been transplanted to it as a cure. We discuss the relation of accrual accounting as a tool of neoliberal policies in the health sector (diagnosis ailment and organ transplant), technical issues regarding accrual accounting and those implementing it (technology of the transplanted organ) and the effects of that accounting on the public sector (the progress of the patient after the transplant). Findings From the topics and examples addressed, we conclude that the transplantation of business accounting and reporting to the public sector carries wider implications for large-scale accounting change and requires vigilance. Transplanting to new fields of accounting technology that is itself undergoing constant change may be more problematic and challenging than previously recognized. Originality/value Critical challenge and assessment of whether Global Warning’s concerns are still valid today and whether the public sector faces new “warnings” regarding its accounting and reporting.