Public sector accounting reform in Latin America and Epistemic Communities: an institutional approach

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.

El isomorfismo institucional en la adopción de las IPSAS

“…A vast number of organizations adopt systems or processes to resemble leading entities, due to environmental pressure or as the result of expert action, all of which are known as institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Some research has accounted for the causes and results of adopting and implementing IPSAS, showing divers results (Baskerville and Grossi, 2019;Neves and Gómez-Villegas, 2020). Such a context makes it essential to identify and systematize the literature addressing IPSAS adoption processes from an institutional perspective to identify and compare factors and conditions in common that help explain and understand the choice of the accounting model for the public sector.…”

“…IPSAS appear as a technical innovation because they incorporate the accrual accounting criterion into public information systems, which traditionally observed the cash criterion. Nevertheless, from the perspective of institutional theory, the IPSAS adoption program is seen as a legitimization process rather than a technical rationalization process (Neves and Gómez-Villegas, 2020).…”

La investigación sobre contabilidad gubernamental en América Latina. Perspectivas para avanzar

“…Estos instrumentos conceptuales son muy adecuados para tratar de entender un aspecto fundamental: cómo es la dinámica de interrelación entre diferentes doctrinas, ideologías y sistemas políticos y económicos (socialismo del siglo XXI y neoliberalismo, por ejemplo), y la manera como los estados comunican a los ciudadanos la formulación y los resultados de sus políticas públicas por intermedio de la contabilidad (Cohen, Manes, Caperchione y Brusca, 2019). Esto requiere ampliar en la región, como se ha sugerido a nivel global (Jacobs, 2016; Bergmann, Fuchs y Schuler, 2019) la base teórica de las investigaciones sobre contabilidad gubernamental, de manera que aparte de las aproximaciones funcionalistas de la NPM, la teoría de la agencia y el enfoque del accountability, se profundice el empleo de esquemas interdisciplinares como las teorías críticas, la governmentality y las diferentes tendencias neoinstitucionalistas (Ocampo, 2018;Neves y Gómez, 2020).…”