CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 130Accounting Theory and Financial ReportingAccounting and Organizational ManagementEconomic Growth and Fiscal Policies

The DOI matches its Crossref record; the references it cites are not checked yet.

Making sense of the users of public sector accounting information and their needs

Open access
van Helden, Jan, Reichard, Christoph·2019·Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management
DOI 10.1108/jpbafm-10-2018-0124
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to dismantle the complex issue of “use of accounting information (AI)” by pointing to different groups of information users, diverging interests and needs of these user groups and various influential factors on the usability and the actual use of AI. Design/methodology/approach This paper includes a literature review and conceptual reflections. Findings The review of recently published articles on the issue of “use of accounting information” presents an actual picture of the academic debate on purposes of use, user types, needs of various user groups and factors influencing the usability and the actual use of AI. The subsequent conceptual reflections deal with so far less regarded user groups, with options to strengthen the user perspective in budgeting and financial reporting, with approaches for engaging users in the content of accounting documents, with interrelations between user needs, usability and use intensity, including various antecedents of the different variables of the information-use issue. Research limitations/implications This paper presents promising routes for future research. Practical implications The paper emphasizes the importance of paying more attention to the specific information needs and the motivations of various stakeholder groups generally interested in using financial information. Originality/value The paper presents results of reviewing recent literature on the issue of “use of accounting information” and provides some insight into specific aspects of this issue.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1108/jpbafm-10-2018-0124

Cites

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet

References 43 · Cited by 130

Research works printed but not linked: 44

  1. 2010, Decision usefulness of cash and accrual information: public sector managers’ perceptions, Australian Accounting Review, 20, 144, 10.1111/j.1835-2561.2010.00087.x · DOI
  2. 1980, Developments in state and municipal accounting, Government Accountants Journal, 12
  3. 1999, Public and private sector accounting – the non-identical twins, Australian Accounting Review, 9, 22
  4. 2003, Accrual accounting and budgeting; key issues and recent developments, OECD Journal on Budgeting, 3, 43, 10.1787/budget-v3-art4-en · DOI
  5. 2013, From rhetoric to practice: the case of Spanish local government reforms, Financial Accountability and Management, 29, 267
  6. 2016, Talking numbers? Analysing the presence of financial information in councilors’ speech during the budget debate in Flemish municipal councils, International Public Management Journal, 19, 453, 10.1080/10967494.2015.1064502 · DOI
  7. 2018, The use and non-use of the government financial report by Maltese members of parliament, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 31, 1124, 10.1108/AAAJ-12-2015-2350 · DOI
  8. 2014, Who uses financial reports and for what purpose? Evidence from capital providers, Accounting in Europe, 1, 185
  9. 2018, Governmental accounting practitioners: cardigan removed, research agenda revealed, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 31, 1026, 10.1108/AAAJ-02-2018-3354 · DOI
  10. 2015, Tracing the future of reporting in the public sector: introducing integrated popular reporting, International Journal of Public Sector Management, 28, 449, 10.1108/IJPSM-11-2014-0140 · DOI
  11. 2012, What should we know about politicians’ performance information need and use?, International Public Management Review, 13, 85
  12. Diamond, J. (2002), “Performance budgeting – is accrual accounting required?”, IMF Working Paper No. 02-240, Washington, DC. · DOI
  13. 2016, New development: the conceptual underpinnings of international public sector accounting, Public Money & Management, 36, 231, 10.1080/09540962.2016.1140974 · DOI
  14. 2005, Conflict and rationality: accounting in the Northern-Ireland’s devolved assembly, Financial Accountability and Management, 19, 33
  15. 2016, Contextualizing politicians’ uses of accounting information: accounting as reassuring and ammunition machine, Public Money & Management, 36, 483, 10.1080/09540962.2016.1237128 · DOI
  16. 2016, The day after: newly-elected politicians and the use of accounting information, Public Money & Management, 36, 499, 10.1080/09540962.2016.1237135 · DOI
  17. 1992, The development of conceptual frameworks of accounting for the public sector, Financial Accountability & Management, 8, 249, 10.1111/j.1468-0408.1992.tb00442.x · DOI
  18. 2000, Public Sector Accounting
  19. 2016, Information brokers and the use of budgetary and financial information by politicians: the case of Portugal, Public Money & Management, 36, 515, 10.1080/09540962.2016.1237152 · DOI
  20. 2010, Mind your accrual: perceived usefulness of financial information in the Australian public sector under different accounting systems, Financial Accountability and Management, 26, 267, 10.1111/j.1468-0408.2010.00502.x · DOI
  21. 2012, Some like it non-financial…, Public Management Review, 14, 903
  22. Mack, J. (2004), “An investigation of the information requirements of the users of Australian public sector financial reports”, PhD-thesis QUT, Brisbane, (*).
  23. 2006, Reflections on the theoretical underpinnings of the general purpose financial reports, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 19, 592, 10.1108/09513570610679146 · DOI
  24. 2017, Insight into performance-based budgeting in the public sector: a literature review and a research agenda, Public Management Review, 19, 911, 10.1080/14719037.2016.1243810 · DOI
  25. 2010, The big question for performance management: why do managers use performance information?, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 20, 849, 10.1093/jopart/muq004 · DOI
  26. 2016, How do politicians shape and use budgets to govern public sector organizations? A position-practice approach, Public Money & Management, 36, 491, 10.1080/09540962.2016.1237133 · DOI
  27. OECD, 2007, Performance Budgeting in OECD Countries, 10.1787/9789264034051-en · DOI
  28. Ouda, H. (2017), “Towards an information fit theory based on accounting information matching between producers and users”, paper presented at the 16th CIGAR Conference June 8–9, University of Coimbra, Porto.
  29. 1992, Elements of a theoretical framework for public sector accounting, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 5, 38
  30. 2006, Accrual accounting in the public sector: experiences from central government in Sweden, Financial Accountability and Management, 22, 47, 10.1111/j.0267-4424.2006.00392.x · DOI
  31. 2016, Budget repair or budget spectacle? The passage of Wisconsin’s Act 10, Public Money & Management, 36, 507, 10.1080/09540962.2016.1237144 · DOI
  32. 2014, Managerialism and profession-based logic: the use of accounting information in changing hospitals, Financial Accountability and Management, 30, 363, 10.1111/faam.12043 · DOI
  33. 2006, Performance information for democracy: the missing link?, Evaluation, 12, 38, 10.1177/1356389006064191 · DOI
  34. 2019, Public sector accounting and the post-NPM: out of the Golden (C) age? Re-considering the public side of (public sector) accounting research, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 32, 255, 10.1108/AAAJ-03-2018-3423 · DOI
  35. Tagesson, T. (2014), “The conditions for and the users of public sector accounting”, in Budding, T., Grossi, G. and Tagesson, T. (Eds), Public Sector Accounting, Chapter 1, Routledge, London, pp. 1-12. · DOI
  36. 2004, Politicians in search of performance information? – survey research on Dutch aldermen’s use of performance information, Financial Accountability and Management, 20, 221, 10.1111/j.0267-4424.2004.00387.x · DOI
  37. 2011, The role of consultant-researchers in the design and implementation process of a programme budget in a local government organization, Management Accounting Research, 22, 56, 10.1016/j.mar.2010.10.006 · DOI
  38. 2015, Challenging the NPM Ideas about performance management: selectivity and differentiation in outcome-oriented performance budgeting, Financial Accountability and Management, 31, 287, 10.1111/faam.12058 · DOI
  39. 2010, Struggling with ambiguity: public managers as users of NPM-oriented management instruments, Public Administration, 88, 999, 10.1111/j.1467-9299.2010.01856.x · DOI
  40. 2016, A critical literature review and a challenging research agenda on politicians’ use of accounting information, Public Money & Management, 36, 531, 10.1080/09540962.2016.1237162 · DOI
  41. 2018, Cash or accruals for budgeting: why some countries changed their budgeting mode and others not, OECD Journal on Budgeting, 18, 89
  42. 2015, Time to look again at accrual budgeting, OECD Journal on Budgeting, 14, 113
  43. Yamamoto, K. (2008), “What matters in legislators’ information use for financial reporting?; the case of Japan”, in Jorge, S. (Ed.), Implementing Reforms in Public Sector Accounting, Coimbra University Press, Coimbra, pp. 370-391, (*). · DOI
  44. 2006, Making up users, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 31, 579

Metadata

Authors
van Helden, J., & Reichard, C.
Affiliations
  • University of Groningen (NL)
  • University of Potsdam (DE)
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management
Publisher
Emerald
Published
2019-11-14
Volume
31
Issue
4
Pages
478-495
ISSN
1096-3367 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1108/jpbafm-10-2018-0124
OpenAlex
W2982890394
Cited by
130
References
43
Citations by year
2026: 8 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 2
FWCI
30.61
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Journal of Public Budgeting Accounting & Financial Management (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Accounting › Accounting Theory and Financial Reporting
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Accounting › Accounting and Organizational Management
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Economic Growth and Fiscal Policies
Keywords
accounting information use, public sector accounting, information users, user needs, usability, user perspective, budgeting, financial reporting, stakeholder interests, user engagement

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review

How to cite

Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Making sense of the users of public sector accounting information and their needs. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1108/jpbafm-10-2018-0124
The paper
van Helden, J., & Reichard, C. (2019). Making sense of the users of public sector accounting information and their needs. Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management. https://doi.org/10.1108/jpbafm-10-2018-0124