The Attitude of Public Sector Accountants Towards Nonfinancial Reporting

Abstract

The role of accounting in the public sector is to provide the information necessary for decision-making and accountability. In response to the changes in the public sector, a new form of reporting is emerging, namely nonfinancial reporting. It is expected that accountants involved in financial reporting will also be involved in the preparation of nonfinancial reports. This paper aims to investigate how accountants perceive nonfinancial reporting and whether they believe that they should be involved in the process of preparing nonfinancial reports. The research in this paper was conducted using a questionnaire sent to public sector accountants in Croatia from February to April 2022. The results of the study show that accountants are not overly positive about nonfinancial reporting, i.e. apart from believing that nonfinancial reporting will become more important in the future, they disagree or are quite undecided about the current need to prepare nonfinancial reports. Although accountants believe that they are in the best position to assess financial sustainability, they do not believe that they should be involved in the process of preparing nonfinancial reports. Our study contributes to the literature on nonfinancial reporting in the public sector and to the literature on public sector accountants’ attitudes towards nonfinancial reporting.