IntroductionAccording to Padoveze accounting is objectively an assessment and information system designed to provide users with demonstrations and analyzes of economic, financial, physical and productivity nature pertaining an entity, the object of accounting. Accounting objectives should therefore implicitly or explicitly contain what users consider being important elements to justify past actions but also help the decision-making process [1].The accounting thematic fields, which according to Oliveira were addressed in published papers included: 1 st ) Managerial accounting; 2 nd ) Financial Accounting; 3 rd ) Accounting Theory; 4 th ) Accounting Education and Research; 5 th ) Cost Accounting; 6 th ) Professional Practice; 7 th ) Public Accounting, Public Budget, and Public Finances; and 8 th ) International Accounting [2].Nonetheless, in a simplified way, Accounting can be grouped into two fields: Financial Accounting and Managerial Accounting [3]. Financial Accounting is oriented to the public and external users (shareholders, creditors, society and government) and is strongly regulated while most of the information produced is generally aggregated, historic, objective and f a financial nature. Managerial accounting is oriented to internal (managers and employees). It is not rigidly regulated and information provided is current, prospective, more subjective and generally disaggregated. One can say Financial Accounting is concerned in reporting the past and give account of transactions while Managerial Accounting is concerned with the future and uses accounting data to support more assertive decisions.Managerial accounting has various functions in an organization such as operational control, the objective of which is to provide information about the efficiency and quality of activities [4]. It also helps to measure, analyze, and disseminate relevant and useful information in order to help the decision-making involving operations, planning and control of organizational activities [5]. Table 1 presents the main characteristics of this subdivision.After this contextualization, this study's objective was established, namely: to identify whether the papers published by the Revista Brasileira de Contabilidade addressing public administration focused more on financial or managerial accounting.
MethodsThis qualitative study was preceded of a bibliographic research, an integrative review. The study's corpus is composed of 15 papers published by the Revista Brasileira de Contabilidade (RBC). All the papers published in the journal's 59 issues from 2000 to 2015 available online were consulted. The search was conducted between May and August 2016 according to the guiding question: What are the characteristics of the papers published by RBC addressing public administration that mainly focused on financial or managerial accounting? The following stages were then. After identifying the papers, an electronic spread sheet was created with the following items: 1) year of publication; 2) number of the issue; 3) paper's title; 4)...