IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/manrev/v66y2016i4d10.1007_s11301-016-0120-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public sector accounting research in the higher education sector: a systematic literature review

Author

Listed:
  • Ulrike Schmidt

    (Technische Universität Dresden)

  • Thomas Günther

    (Technische Universität Dresden)

Abstract

Management techniques, such as marketization and performance measurement of academic activities, can be evidenced in universities around the globe. They have given rise to extensive research in the higher education sector. This paper provides a systematic literature review of 236 papers on public sector accounting research in higher education from 83 analysed journals from the three areas of accounting, public management and administration, and higher education between 1980 and 2014. We analyse research location, theoretical approaches, research methods, and topics used in these fields and their change over time. We also compare our results with those of reviews on general public sector accounting research. Our results show a dominance of research from Anglo-American countries. The majority of papers informed by a radical/alternative theoretical approach use descriptive case and field research whereas studies with a functionalist approach apply mathematical analyses, surveys and archival research. In terms of topics, high importance is attached to accountability/governance, performance measurement, external reporting, and budgeting in which the adoption of accounting systems and their usefulness is often discussed. Furthermore, we cluster papers in 12 groups and find a highly fragmented body of research reflecting the different specifics of the higher education sector. From this we derive opportunities for future research.

Suggested Citation

  • Ulrike Schmidt & Thomas Günther, 2016. "Public sector accounting research in the higher education sector: a systematic literature review," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 66(4), pages 235-265, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:manrev:v:66:y:2016:i:4:d:10.1007_s11301-016-0120-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11301-016-0120-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11301-016-0120-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11301-016-0120-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Otley, David & Pollanen, Raili M., 2000. "Budgetary criteria in performance evaluation: a critical appraisal using new evidence," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 25(4-5), pages 483-496, May.
    2. Dean Neu & Leiser Silva & Elizabeth Ocampo Gomez, 2008. "Diffusing financial practices in Latin American higher education," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 21(1), pages 49-77, January.
    3. Baxter, Jane & Chua, Wai Fong, 2003. "Alternative management accounting research--whence and whither," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 28(2-3), pages 97-126.
    4. Coen, David & Thatcher, Mark, 2008. "Network Governance and Multi-level Delegation: European Networks of Regulatory Agencies1," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(1), pages 49-71, April.
    5. Richard L. Daft & Robert H. Lengel, 1986. "Organizational Information Requirements, Media Richness and Structural Design," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(5), pages 554-571, May.
    6. Saliterer, Iris & Korac, Sanja, 2013. "Performance information use by politicians and public managers for internal control and external accountability purposes," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 24(7), pages 502-517.
    7. Beverungen, Armin & Hoedemaekers, Casper & Veldman, Jeroen, 2014. "Charity and finance in the university," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 58-66.
    8. William Dunn & David Miller, 2007. "A Critique of the New Public Management and the Neo-Weberian State: Advancing a Critical Theory of Administrative Reform," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 7(4), pages 345-358, December.
    9. Philip M. Podsakoff & Scott B. MacKenzie & Daniel G. Bachrach & Nathan P. Podsakoff, 2005. "The influence of management journals in the 1980s and 1990s," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(5), pages 473-488, May.
    10. Ahrens, Thomas & Chapman, Christopher S., 2006. "Doing qualitative field research in management accounting: Positioning data to contribute to theory," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 31(8), pages 819-841, November.
    11. Oakes, Helen & Berry, Anthony, 2009. "Accounting colonization: Three case studies in further education," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 343-378.
    12. Chenhall, R. H. & Langfield-Smith, K., 1998. "The relationship between strategic priorities, management techniques and management accounting: an empirical investigation using a systems approach," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 243-264, April.
    13. Mensah, Yaw M. & Werner, Robert, 2003. "Cost efficiency and financial flexibility in institutions of higher education," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 293-323.
    14. Rob Gray & James Guthrie & Lee Parker, 2002. "Rites of passage and the self‐immolation of academic accounting labour: an essay exploring exclusivity versus mutuality in accounting scholarship," Accounting Forum, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(1), pages 1-30, March.
    15. Arnaboldi, Michela & Azzone, Giovanni, 2010. "Constructing performance measurement in the public sector," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 266-282.
    16. Nagy, Judy & Robb, Alan, 2008. "Can universities be good corporate citizens?," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 19(8), pages 1414-1430.
    17. Sven Modell, 2006. "Institutional and negotiated order perspectives on cost allocations: The case of the Swedish university sector," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(2), pages 219-251.
    18. Covaleski, Mark A. & Dirsmith, Mark W., 1988. "The use of budgetary symbols in the political arena: An historically informed field study," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 1-24, January.
    19. Jasmin Godemann & Jan Bebbington & Christian Herzig & Jeremy Moon, 2014. "Higher education and sustainable development," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 27(2), pages 218-233, February.
    20. Luft, Joan & Shields, Michael D., 2003. "Mapping management accounting: graphics and guidelines for theory-consistent empirical research," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 28(2-3), pages 169-249.
    21. Jane Broadbent & James Guthrie, 2008. "Public sector to public services: 20 years of “contextual” accounting research," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 21(2), pages 129-169, February.
    22. Ahrens, Thomas, 2008. "Overcoming the subjective-objective divide in interpretive management accounting research," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 33(2-3), pages 292-297.
    23. Grabner, Isabella & Moers, Frank, 2013. "Management control as a system or a package? Conceptual and empirical issues," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 407-419.
    24. Tsamenyi, Mathew & Noormansyah, Irvan & Uddin, Shahzad, 2008. "Management controls in family-owned businesses (FOBs): A case study of an Indonesian family-owned University," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 62-74.
    25. Mathew Tsamenyi & Irvan Noormansyah & Shahzad Uddin, 2008. "Management controls in family-owned businesses (FOBs): A case study of an Indonesian family-owned University," Accounting Forum, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(1), pages 62-74, March.
    26. Gordon, Teresa & Fischer, Mary & Malone, David & Tower, Greg, 2002. "A comparative empirical examination of extent of disclosure by private and public colleges and universities in the United States," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 235-275.
    27. Hood, Christopher, 1995. "The "new public management" in the 1980s: Variations on a theme," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 20(2-3), pages 93-109.
    28. Chenhall, Robert H., 2003. "Management control systems design within its organizational context: findings from contingency-based research and directions for the future," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 28(2-3), pages 127-168.
    29. Sadri Tahar & Roman Boutellier, 2013. "Resource Allocation in Higher Education in The Context of New Public Management," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(5), pages 687-711, June.
    30. Elmar Retief Venter & Charl de Villiers, 2013. "The accounting profession's influence on academe: South African evidence," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 26(8), pages 1246-1278, October.
    31. Parker, Lee, 2011. "University corporatisation: Driving redefinition," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 434-450.
    32. Fischer, Mary & Gordon, Teresa P. & Kraut, Marla A., 2010. "Meeting user information needs: The impact of major changes in FASB and GASB standards on financial reporting by colleges and universities," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 374-399, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nicolas Roos, 2019. "A Matter of Responsible Management from Higher Education Institutions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-17, November.
    2. Chengli Shu & Hammad Bin Azam Hashmi & Zhenxin Xiao & Syed Waqar Haider & Mishal Nasir, 2022. "How Do Islamic Values Influence CSR? A Systematic Literature Review of Studies from 1995–2020," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 181(2), pages 471-494, November.
    3. Chris Wagner, 2020. "Deducing a state-of-the-art presentation of the Eclectic Paradigm from four decades of development: a systematic literature review," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 70(1), pages 51-96, February.
    4. Amanda Curry, 2019. "Across the great divide: a literature review of management accounting and operations management at the shop floor," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 69(1), pages 75-119, February.
    5. Francesco Ricciotti, 2020. "From value chain to value network: a systematic literature review," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 70(2), pages 191-212, May.
    6. Muhammad Bilal Zafar & Ahmad Azam Sulaiman, 2019. "Corporate social responsibility and Islamic banks: a systematic literature review," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 69(2), pages 159-206, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bhimani, Alnoor & Sivabalan, Prabhu & Soonawalla, Kazbi, 2018. "A study of the linkages between rolling budget forms, uncertainty and strategy," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 306-323.
    2. P. Maik Hamann, 2017. "Towards a contingency theory of corporate planning: a systematic literature review," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 67(4), pages 227-289, August.
    3. Hall, Matthew, 2010. "Accounting information and managerial work," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 301-315, April.
    4. Dixon, Keith, 2013. "Growth and dispersion of accounting research about New Zealand before and during a National Research Assessment Exercise: Five decades of academic journals bibliometrics," MPRA Paper 51100, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Irene Eleonora Lisi, 2018. "Determinants and Performance Effects of Social Performance Measurement Systems," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 152(1), pages 225-251, September.
    6. Parker, Lee D., 2012. "Qualitative management accounting research: Assessing deliverables and relevance," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 54-70.
    7. Mundy, Julia, 2010. "Creating dynamic tensions through a balanced use of management control systems," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 499-523, July.
    8. Morales, Jérémy & Sponem, Samuel, 2017. "You too can have a critical perspective! 25 years of Critical Perspectives on Accounting," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 149-166.
    9. Greve, Jan & Ax, Christian & Bedford, David S. & Bednarek, Piotr & Brühl, Rolf & Dergård, Johan & Ditillo, Angelo & Dossi, Andrea & Gosselin, Maurice & Hoozée, Sophie & Israelsen, Poul & Janschek, Ott, 2017. "The impact of society on management control systems," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 253-266.
    10. Staci A. Kenno & Michelle C. Lau & Barbara J. Sainty, 2018. "In Search of a Theory of Budgeting: A Literature Review," Accounting Perspectives, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(4), pages 507-553, December.
    11. Bedford, David S. & Malmi, Teemu & Sandelin, Mikko, 2016. "Management control effectiveness and strategy: An empirical analysis of packages and systems," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 12-28.
    12. Hall, Matthew, 2010. "Accounting information and managerial work," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 28539, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. Hall, Matthew, 2008. "The effect of comprehensive performance measurement systems on role clarity, psychological empowerment and managerial performance," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 33(2-3), pages 141-163.
    14. Laitinen, Erkki K., 2014. "Influence of cost accounting change on performance of manufacturing firms," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 230-240.
    15. Abernethy, Margaret A. & Anderson, Shannon W. & Nair, Sujay & Jiang, Yile (Anson), 2021. "Manager ‘growth mindset’ and resource management practices," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    16. Stergiou, Konstantinos & Ashraf, Junaid & Uddin, Shahzad, 2013. "The role of structure and agency in management accounting control change of a family owned firm: A Greek case study," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 62-73.
    17. Ibrahim Bader Alharbi & Rossilah Jamil & Nik Hasnaa Nik Mahmood & Awaluddin Mohamed Shaharoun, 2023. "Transformational Leadership’s Impact on Organizational Innovation: The Mediating Role of Management Control System," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 24(6), pages 1418-1433, December.
    18. Long, Chris P., 2018. "To control and build trust: How managers use organizational controls and trust-building activities to motivate subordinate cooperation," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 69-91.
    19. Johansson, Tobias, 2018. "Testing for control system interdependence with structural equation modeling: Conceptual developments and evidence on the levers of control framework," Journal of Accounting Literature, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 47-62.
    20. Christoph Feichter & Isabella Grabner, 2020. "Empirische Forschung zu Management Control – Ein Überblick und neue Trends [Empirical Management Control Reserach—An Overview and Future Directions]," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 72(2), pages 149-181, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:manrev:v:66:y:2016:i:4:d:10.1007_s11301-016-0120-0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.