The Primacy of, and Complexity of, Accounting for Government

• Date: 01 November 2013
• Author: Johan Christiaens,Irvine Lapsley,Eugenio Caperchione
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/faam.12024
• Published date: 01 November 2013

Financial Accountability & Management, 29(4), November 2013, 0267-4424

Foreword

The Primacy of, and Complexity of,

Accounting for Government

EUGENIO CAPERCHIONE,JOHAN CHRISTIAENS AND IRVINE LAPSLEY∗

This special issue is based on a selection of papers from the 13th CIGAR

conference held at Ghent in June 2011. Previous research on government

accounting (Lapsley 2000; and Kurunmaki, et al. 2011) has identified both the

importance of accounting in government and the need for further work in a

relatively neglected area of accounting research. In this special issue we identify

current trends in research in this area and point to areas of potential research.

The primacy of accounting in government can be attributed to the intro-

duction, and continuing importance, of the NPM reforms (Hood, 1991 and

1995) at the end of the last century. The modernisation reforms of this century

have mobilised these NPM ideas and extended them, giving an even greater

visibility to accounting in many State matters. However, in this Foreword, we

make observations on the significance of accounting as it has been modified and

translated into practice. In particular, the concepts of accounting become more

complex and subtle, moving beyond an accent on the calculative practices of

accountants in the latter part of the last century. Contemporary understanding

of accounting practice in government is best analysed by the mobilisation

of ideas and concepts, which permit more nuanced interpretations of the

nature and practice of government reforms and practices. In this special

issue, there are papers which have a primary focus on both the conceptual

and interpretive in exploring the mechanisms of implementing government

accounting changes. The particular concepts which are mobilised within the

papers in this special issue are (1) ideas of ambiguity in accounting implemen-

tation (2) accounting and power and (3) reform processes in public sector

settings.

∗The Special Issue Editors are respectively from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia;

the Ghent University; and IPSAR, University of Edinburgh Business School.

e-mail: eugenio.caperchione@unimore.it, johan.christiaens@ugent.be and Irvine.Lapsley@

ed.ac.uk

C

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