In this paper, we develop and empirically test an institutional governance theory for explaining the decisions by the population of 50 US state governments to adopt Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) for external financial reporting. Governmental accounting studies have generally explained the governance choice of an accounting method in terms of the economic consequences of these choices for managerial welfare and other microeconomic determinants of those decisions. While the explanatory power of these models are generally good, there is often a large unexplained variance which is presumably not explainable in terms of the extant agency models of accounting choice. Our study develops an institutional governance theory and demonstrates that institutional governance variables in conjunction with traditional economic agency variables can improve the explanatory power of government accounting choice models. Our empirical results are consistent with the stipulations of the institutional governance theory
This introductory article to the special symposium entitled “The Evolution of Governmental and Nonprofit Accounting Education” introduces the five symposium articles that follow. The article also presents information to assist governmental and nonprofit educators in business schools and public administration educators in other colleges within a university in making comparisons between their perspectives and approaches. The authors’ view as accounting professors is that students in both disciplines develop stronger competencies for success in the public sector when their programs integrate context and techniques that come from using alternative instructional approaches and a diverse set of resources.
One of the central challenges facing today's state transportation policymakers is how to incorporate preventive maintenance concepts and strategies into existing asset-management systems. Seven unique challenges to implementing preventive maintenance are identified in the literature and elsewhere, and a discussion covers the ways states have addressed those challenges through various implementation strategies. Then, case studies provide examples of how that incorporation has occurred in the departments of transportation in Michigan, Kansas, and Nebraska. The three case studies are presented in an effort to demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages of these three unique approaches, herein labeled the top-down approach, for Michigan; the bottom-up approach, for Kansas; and the inclusive approach, for Nebraska. In particular, an examination is presented of how preventive maintenance concepts were integrated into the planning, budgeting, and technical needs-assessment for state highways.
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