The accountants are coming! How accountants can help policymakers in social program evaluation

Abstract

Recently, numerous writers, accountants and non-accountants alike, have considered the relative merit of extending the scope of accountants' activities to include a role in social program evaluation. This paper attempts, firstly, to offer a framework which identifies various aspects of the evaluation process and, secondly, to highlight the contribution accountants can make within that framework. The paper consists of three sections. The first section considers activities which are typically performed by accountants in the profit-seeking sector of economy. The second section describes various facets of evaluation and the stages of program development, and attempts to integrate the two via a differential evaluation process. In the concluding section, it suggests that accountants do have a significant contribution to make to social program evaluation, and that this contribution is consonant with their role in profit-seeking enterprises. However, the paper also seeks to caution about the areas where accountants cannot and should not be expected to make contributions without specific training beyond their accounting expertise.