The role of accounting in public governance process

Abstract

The intensification of the relations between government and society, whether by means of publicprivate interaction or of the participation of civil society, contributes to the appreciation of accounting in the scope of public administration. Accounting gains a new feature with this configuration. In addition to its basic capacities of registering and interpreting all phenomena, among which are public budgets, accounting may also provide citizens power and perform an active role in the socio-economic development of a country or a community. The main objective of this article is to analyze literature on accounting from the public governance context. Specific objectives are: to comprehend the role of accounting in the process of public governance, present the experiences in Brazil and present challenges of the accounting reform in Brazil. This investigation is characterized as a qualitative, descriptive bibliographic and documental research. In the documental research we analyzed normative instruction, law and the Federal Accounting Council in Brazil, all related to the functionality of accounting in Brazil and its accounting reform. This study demonstrates that accounting presents a potential to perform the role of strengthening democracy, social control, accountability, creating a social power in the dynamic process of public governance.

Towards good governance of heritage management systems: Possible role of accounting

“…Certainly, social disorder, the absence of control and confusion in the decisions regarding public politics would follow. This is what happens when the immense potential of this science is not used or used inadequately (Ribeiro et al, 2013). As revealed, England and Australia apply stateof-the-art HM strategies and GG practices, which is expected as pioneers in the field.…”

“…Public governance implies collaboration between government and citizens in all phases of the political cycle (Snijkers, 2005). It entails governments maintaining high levels of transparency and accountability to their stakeholders, promoting information disclosure and improving citizen engagement in public matters (Ribeiro et al, 2013). IFAC & CIPFA (2014) points out the interest of the stakeholders in knowing how entities operate and maintain their capacity, as reflected, e.g., in the overall budget and the financial performance and position at year-end.…”

“…Grossi & Steccolini (2014) The role of accounting in strengthening democracy, social control, accountability and creating a social power in the dynamic process of public governance has been well demonstrated. Ribeiro et al (2013) outline some of the contributions of accounting for the advancement of public governance, including verified registries, classification capacity, inspection capacity, and a better vision of the management practices to all stakeholders. Accounting has many capacities which are particularly useful when pursuing GG, such as identifying deviations, bettering use of public resources, and contributing to the construction of public politics (Graham, 2010).…”

“…Accounting may exercise capacity control, whether in internal or external, enabling useful, consistent and quality information. Accounting uses managerial or operational control, book and documental, which makes it an efficient instrument in control (Ribeiro et al, 2013). Accordingly, accounting should be acknowledged as an integral aspect of a GG system.…”

“…This should be accompanied by the application of good practices in transparency and reporting and assurance of effective accountability. A study by Ribeiro et al (2013) shows accounting practices as key elements to obtaining GG. It argues that without full utilization of accounting practices, there will be a lack of accounting information which helps in the decisions making and supervision processes.…”