Abstract
Abstract Latin American countries have undergone a growing interest in international accounting standards. Several countries are making progress in the adoption of international standards driven by different internal factors as well as external dynamics. The role of experts in the design of public policies associated with international standards has been studied by the epistemic community theory, which is the theoretical framework used in this study to address the influence of different international organizations on the adoption of IPSAS in Brazil and Colombia. This paper discusses the isomorphic institutional pressure exerted over the governments of these two countries in order to meet an international standard considered to be adequate. Meanwhile, the emerging trend towards the adoption of IPSAS in Latin America continues to grow, although some obstacles to achieving the goals defined in the reform arise.
Highlights
New Public Management has become the prevailing doctrine for public sector reforms during the last 30 years
Using Colombia and Brazil as case studies, this paper aims at contributing to the growing body of comparative research on the topic by presenting a two-country comparison of public sector accounting reforms; especially in countries with different policy organization structures and diverse cultural backgrounds, all of which may have a direct impact on the articulation of public sector accounting reforms
We characterize the process of accrual accounting implementation and formal International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) adoption in Brazil and Colombia based on in-depth analysis of institutional documents and other academic sources
Summary
New Public Management has become the prevailing doctrine for public sector reforms during the last 30 years. Some studies have tried to understand the reasons for European countries to consider the adoption of IPSAS for the accrual accounting systems of central governments and, in a later approach, the different levels of adoption (Christiaens, Reyniers, & Rolle, 2010; Christiaens, Vanhee, Manes-Rossi, Aversano, & van Cauwenberge, 2015) Such studies identified that some governments believe that the adoption of IPSAS would improve the comparability of financial information, both nationally and internationally. They found most jurisdictions do not choose to apply IPSAS because they fear losing their standard-setting authority or have chosen to implement their own business accrual accounting regulations (Christiaens et al, 2010, 2015). European Union has been developing the European Public Sector Accounting Standards, EPSAS1 (Brusca & Gómez-Villegas, 2013; Brusca, Caperchione, Cohen, & Manes-Rossi, 2015)
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