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What We Might Know (But Aren't Sure) About Public‐Sector Accrual Accounting
Author(s) -
CHRISTENSEN MARK
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
australian accounting review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.551
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1835-2561
pISSN - 1035-6908
DOI - 10.1111/j.1835-2561.2007.tb00453.x
Subject(s) - accrual , accounting , assertion , context (archaeology) , confusion , government (linguistics) , business , revenue recognition , public sector , fund accounting , positive accounting , accounting standard , financial accounting , economics , accounting information system , political science , psychology , law , earnings , computer science , history , linguistics , philosophy , archaeology , psychoanalysis , programming language
This article responds to the preceding paper by Allan Barton by reviewing the practitioner and academic literature on accrual accounting in a general government sector context. It considers why that literature has a preponderance of assertion and is underweight in evidence. It argues that Barton's paper, while being a useful addition to the calls for improvements to the model of accrual accounting applied to GGS organisations, has flaws in its assertions as to the superiority of accrual accounting per se. These flaws are an absence of supporting evidence and a confusion between internal and external accounting.