CASH FLOW ACCOUNTING AND THE ALLOCATION PROBLEM

Cash flow accounting (CFA) proposals typically have included firm statements that CFA data are allocation-free. This is not entirely true if the term allocation is interpreted in a wide sense. However, it can be argued that most allocations can be avoided in CFA systems, and this paper is an attempt to present this argument. In particular, it aims to strengthen the case for CFA in practice.     

A TAXONOMY OF THE PERCEIVED BENEFITS OF ACCRUAL ACCOUNTING AND BUDGETING: EVIDENCE FROM GERMAN STATES

Accrual Output‐Based Budgeting (AOBB) in government has been disputed intensely among academics and practitioners. While normative, conceptual, or theory‐based literature made promising claims about which benefits can be expected from reforming government accounting and budgeting, recent empirical research finds that at least some of these expectations have been massively overstated. The observed gap between promises and reality poses the question for the true benefits anew. Basing our analysis on practitioners’ judgment, we suggest a general and prioritized landscape of perceived benefits (taxonomy). Our findings are derived from 42 interviews conducted in the context of two German federal states. Mapping our results to prior claims in the literature, we reveal that the practitioners interviewed do not see upsides in areas that former research deems to be important while other and previously not emphasized areas, such as mindset changes, seem to convince in practical life. The results of our analysis offer a profound basis for further exploration of the benefits and/or even cost/benefit evaluations.     

ACCRUAL ACCOUNTING REFORMS: ONLY FOR BUSINESSLIKE (PARTS OF) GOVERNMENTS

Based on governmental accounting experiences and on the rising criticism of accrual accounting, this paper proposes that accrual accounting in governments will only succeed in businesslike (parts of) governments in the coming years. This proposition leans on the inappropriate transfer of the accrual accounting framework from the profit sector, the underestimation of difficulties considering accrual budgeting and the lack of attention to the political dimension. This paper points out that the advocates of accrual accounting have neglected some important considerations.     

USING IDEAS TO ADVANCE PROFESSIONS: PUBLIC SECTOR ACCRUAL ACCOUNTING

This study investigates a contest of ideas that took place between public sector accrual accounting (PSAA) and Government Finance Statistics (GFS) in the Australian state of New South Wales. The debate, its context and its course is historically analysed from a neo‐institutional theory perspective, employing both documentary and oral history sources. Important in PSAA's win over GFS were: phantom images of PSAA success; a dominant politician; discourse control directing attention to the balance sheet; and, normative isomorphism from professionally qualified public sector accountants. Understanding public sector accounting change requires analysis beyond technical change; in this case the actors and their motives overwhelmed the technical.     

EXPLORING AN ACCOUNTING PARADIGM: THE CASH ACCOUNT

This paper explores the possibility that practitioners' standards of accounting rationality are partly determined by a “cash account” paradigm, of which the method for preparing accounts from incomplete records is a major exemplar (an important part of the Kuhnian concept). Preparation of accounts from incomplete records forms part of many accountants' early practical experience, and often provides the setting in which elementary bookkeeping and accounting concepts start to become “second nature”. In addition to this, and partly as a result of it, accountants may tend to refer (perhaps not always explicitly) to the so-called “single entry method” when addressing much more complex and intractable problems. Practitioner paradigms get less attention in the literature than research paradigms, and one purpose of this paper is to redress this balance, and to show how articulation of a practitioner paradigm might suggest ways out of some conceptual difficulties     

SOME FORMAL CONNECTIONS BETWEEN ECONOMIC VALUES AND YIELDS AND ACCOUNTING NUMBERS

This paper reports a number of results concerning the relationship between accounting numbers and economic values and yields. Some of the results have appeared previously in the literature and some are new. They have been collected together in a common analytical framework in order to demonstrate their formal, mathematical character. It is shown that present value can be obtained by discounting almost any profit numbers; that accounting rates of return define a discount function directly analagous to the term structure and the internal rate of return; and that the internal rate of return can be expressed as a linear weighted sum of accounting rates of return.     

A NOTE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN REPORTED CASH FLOW MEASURES,RATIOS AND THEIR ACCRUAL COUNTERPARTS

This note focuses on information redundancy of cash flow measures reported in and financial ratios derived directly from Cash Flow Statements. Previous research utilised recomputed, “traditional” and “refined”, measures to proxy for cash flow. Comovements are derived amongst various earnings and cash flow key variable measures, select financial ratios and changes in financial ratios. Key variables' results support the notion that reported cash flows are correlated with funds flow and earnings. However, reported cash flows relative to funds flow are less correlated with most of their accrual based counterparts. Cash flows thus have potential to provide new and non-redundant information relative to funds and accruals. Also, the incremental benefit of reported, relative to reconstructed cash flow measures is apparent. In light of the above, the merit of cash flow for the specific decision context of identifying suspended firms is investigated. Cash flow data in this context is found to be as useful as, but not superior to, comparable accruals data.     

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF AMBIGUITY IN ACCOUNTING AND EVERYDAY LIFE: THE SELF-PERPETUATION OF ACCOUNTING

This research study seeks to demonstrate accounting's autopoietic capacities in social enactments of change such as a preferencing tribal-based corporatisation. The paper, through a form of critical ethnography, underscores the argument that accounting self-reproduces through a complex interplay between: (a) the political effecting of ambiguity in a controversial and sensitive policy of change; (b) assumptions about accounting's ability to reduce ambiguity; and, (c) the inherent ambiguities in the accounting language. The research suggests that in order to be more appreciating of accounting's self-reproducing capacities, we need to be more conscious of the interplay between the politics of ambiguity in society and the aesthetics of ambiguity in accounting. In the process, the paper highlights the general applicability of accounting as an act of self-replication, and the way in which perceived “meaningless[ness]” and time “eating” notions of accounting, ironically contemplate more of it.     

CREATIVE ACCRUAL ACCOUNTING IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: ‘MILKING’ WATER UTILITIES TO BALANCE MUNICIPAL BUDGETS AND ACCOUNTS

Traditionally, the financial balance of public sector economic entities has been determined by balanced budgets and cash‐based or modified cash‐based budgetary accounting. Since the 1990s the superiority of accrual accounting in the public sector context has been emphasized by both practitioners and academics. This paper demonstrates that accrual accounting also offers opportunities for the use of creative accounting, or earnings management, in the public sector, at least as long as accounting is performed in accordance with diverse national norms instead of internationally acceptable accounting standards.     

THE SHARING OF MEANING BETWEEN ACCOUNTING STUDENTS AND MEMBERS OF THE ACCOUNTING PROFESSION

This study examines the extent to which accounting students and practising accountants share the same meanings of fundamental accounting concepts. In doing so, it provides evidence on the suitability of using accounting students as surrogates for accounting practitioners in the study of connotative meaning in accounting. Using the semantic differential technique, the “cognitive structure” (the structure within which meaning is held) as well as the positioning or placement of concepts within the structure were determined for both groups. Each group was found to have a similar cognitive structure (a three dimensional structure comparable to the classic structure found in the psychology literature, Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum, 1957). However, the placement or positioning of concepts by students within that shared structure was significantly different to that of accounting practitioners.